Have you ever wanted to see your team or organization’s performance but your reports don’t make sense because each piece of information is sourced from different systems? At Windsor, we’ve often come across this problem through the clients we serve. This article addresses why it’s important to move to one consolidated system with enterprise software.
Information silos and disparate systems are common.
Executives seldom plan for multiple software solutions to be chosen by individual departments as a matter of executive strategy. Instead, as organizations evolve and grow, it is common to adopt individual solutions as each department advocates for specialized software that handles something important to their operations. It’s not uncommon for organizations to have many software systems, including custom-built systems and niche software.
The problem is that department-based solutions result in data silos – also called information silos. Executives get frustrated by these disparate systems because results or insights from data can’t be easily viewed across the organization, constraining executives from making fully informed decisions.
With enterprise-wide software, executives see across the organization for more effective decision making.
To address information silos, today many organizations use enterprise software, such as “ERP”, or “CRM” or other software. What may be less common is using enterprise software across departments to streamline workflows, roll up reporting and activities, and stay current with changing compliance.
Many of our clients used to have information silos
At Windsor, we are often helping our clients upgrade from departmental solutions by providing them with Windsor’s nVIRO, a permitting data management platform that works enterprise wide and was created solely for agencies.We’ve been transforming data and systems for over 25 years and we’ve worked for environmental agencies across every state, so, based on our broad experience, the insights offered in this article are grounded.
Our nVIRO clients know that it’s a substantial project to transition away from their current methods to inter-connected and streamlined enterprise software. But each time a project has been completed, our clients realize how much it’s transformed their business. With enterprise software, we expect the same can happen for your organization.
Are there downsides to enterprise software?
Absolutely. As mentioned in a recent blog, “The problem with one-size-fits-all enterprise software solutions”, not all enterprise-wide solutions are created equally. It is important to be cautious of these “one-size-fits-all” solutions. As part of the buying process, we highly recommend getting detailed input from end users, department by department, so there is not a mismatch between enterprise software capabilities and user requirements.
What are the reasons to move to enterprise software?
Here are the top reasons to move to an enterprise-wide solution:
1. Enterprise software reduces IT support and is easier to maintain.
The more silos you have, the higher the IT support staff headcount, training, and most often, software licensing costs. When things are centralized, it should be simpler to maintain and more cost effective. Also, when information silos are dispersed across various departments, it takes significant effort to update or even replace them as they age and security risks arise.
At Windsor, we have seen clients with deprecated or aging systems and they can be challenged to find employees and resources to maintain them.
“Use of a centralized enterprise system provides agility and scalability, enabling quick adaptation to changing needs.”
Kevin Lyons, Project Manager, Windsor Solutions
2. Management can make more informed decisions based on a holistic view.
When leadership understands the full picture across the organization, decision making is more effective. For example, when there is not an enterprise-wide solution in place, one department can identify a customer in one way, and another department can identify the same customer by another means. In these situations, it’s very difficult to report on customer activity across the organization as there is no mechanism to discern unique customers across the organization.
In any organization, it’s also important to understand your customer and to be able to identify the full customer profile, such as:
“Are they a dependable customer or a problematic customer? Is their account paid in full across all departments?”
In our industry, environmental state agencies run compliance monitoring for air, water, land, and solid waste under different state-run programs. Each separate program can identify compliance issues at the same industrial plant. But if a staff member cannot see another program’s issues for that same facility, these combined concerns may not be considered in new compliance cases.
3. Executives can better advocate for departmental needs such as staff resources or improved processes.
With information silos, each department often defines tasks and processes differently – and that makes it difficult to roll up activities and pinpoint organizational issues and bottlenecks. One department may be functioning effectively, while another is struggling with similar work functions. Or, all departments may have problem areas in common that could be addressed, that is, if one could see into these issues.
As an example, state agencies typically have required turnaround times for processing permits. Unfortunately, we have seen agencies struggle to know if the turnaround times are actually being met and leadership often needs to make a lot of assumptions to make the processing data look the same across areas of the organization. Having a centralized enterprise solution allows this assessment to be much easier to perform.
Also, over time, departments can look for ways to collaborate with each other. For example, if a department is scheduling a customer site visit, and another department just needs a quick check on something, that is the type of task that could be effectively done if reports and communications were connected across departments.
4. The organization becomes more nimble as markets and rules change.
With information silos, it can be difficult to react to changing market environments and changing rules and regulations. Having an enterprise solution can enable your organization to be dynamic in supporting the changing business climate.
Older software tends to be less flexible as organizational or user requirements change. This is a big issue for all organizations as market environments or new rules and regulations change.
Conclusion
If your organization is noticing the challenges with information silos and finds it difficult to make informed decisions based on cross-organization performance, we recommend that you start considering your alternatives, but carefully, as many enterprise solutions claim they can help but may not offer a system that has the capability to support the nuances of your business for which your end users truly need.
About Windsor Solutions
All environmental agencies have unlimited environmental challenges but with limited resources. Our job has been to enable them to be better at their tasks, which includes helping them with quicker visibility, stronger workflow efficiencies and better tools to act with precision.
We remain a hopeful group at Windsor, doing what we can do to simplify and streamline the work of governmental agencies across all states. After all, they have much still to do, and so do we.
If you’d like to comment on this blog by contacting us, we’d love to hear from you.
Kevin Lyons, Project Manager, Windsor Solutions
