Connecting Programs & Apps In Your Business
If your company is like most other businesses, you have a lot of different programs that you use on a daily basis. One program for email, and then maybe you have an online store, a customer management system, another database or two, each holding pieces of information that are important to your business.
It’s an easy situation to get into. There are a lot of apps and programs that can do one or two things really well, which makes it convenient to use different tools for different parts of your business.
Short Term Gain With Potential Long Term Pain
The problem, of course, is that over time it’s easy to get confused about exactly where you put any given piece of information, and that confusion will cost you more and more time and effort as your business grows. We human beings are simply not very good at staying disciplined about data entry and record keeping, and figuring out which system holds any given piece of information gets more and more time-consuming when you have multiple people using multiple tools on a daily basis.
Having disconnected systems in your workflows is one of those problems that a lot of businesses live with longer than they need to because they’ve learned to deal with it, figuring out clever workarounds or being resigned to the fact that they have to look in three different places to find that phone number or email address they need.
Sound familiar? This happens to pretty much every small business owner, and small wonder really. Most businesses start to feel the pain caused by disconnected systems as soon as there is a second person using the tools, and the problem typically just grows from there until it’s addressed.
Escaping The Trap: Connections & Consolidation
There are two ways that businesses typically address the inefficiencies caused by having multiple programs and applications in their business:
Connectors: Connectors are little programs called APIs or Webhooks that allow you to sync up information between your shopping cart, marketing campaign app, phone system, email tool, CRM, whatever. These connectors are often used as a bridge step for businesses to start the process of harmonizing their data across the different tools that they are using.
Consolidation: Most successful businesses will reach a point in their growth where they realize that APIs and Webhooks can only do so much to keep their data organized. If you are ready to scale your business to the next level, it may be time to think about consolidating some of the tools you are using into a more sophisticated application that can manage more aspects of your business.
Okay, Fine. I get it. So now what?
I wish there was a single answer to how to start the process of connecting and consolidating your business applications, but getting your software infrastructure organized in a way that’s its ready to scale and isn’t wasting your time is not a one size fits all situation.
The good news is that there are several tools out there that do more than one thing well. Systems like Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Zoho are examples of solutions that might be worth considering, but which tool makes sense really does depend on your business and what you want to acheive.
The point is to start thinking about how you are going to connect and consolidate your platforms before you really need to. If you want to talk it over, feel free to book a free consultation with me and we can talk it through.