Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. A word that is paramount to any organization that’s striving to maximise their productivity and streamline their operations. However, many organizations overlook unknown inefficiencies by making use of siloed services and platforms that make collaboration and multi-department communication increasingly difficult. The result of this ranges from wasted employee time, employee frustration, unnecessary costs and so on.
What are Siloed Platforms?
Siloed platforms are tools, systems or platforms that operate independently of one another. This independence prevents smooth information sharing between platforms as well as collaboration among teams. These platforms can include anything from project management tools and communication tools to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. When teams or departments use multiple tools / software / platforms that are not compatible with one another, barriers are created that negatively affect collaboration and the flow of information.
Time Waste
An almost instant detriment from the use of siloed platforms is the waste of employee time. Employees find themselves having to duplicate work and efforts as they have to search for information on multiple different systems. The data found on each system is often inconsistent. Let’s get into some more detail of how time is wasted.
1. Inefficient Communication: When different communication tools are used, it’s easy for teams to miss important messages or to only reach them at a later time. This leads to delays in communication or confusion. Employees will also spend extra time searching for information or data that could have been shared and accessed more easily if unified platforms or tools were being used.
2. Data Duplication: When siloed platforms are being used, it’s common to find employees having to enter the same data into each siloed platform. This is not only a huge time waster but it also increases the risk of human error which later on is likely to result in costly corrections or inaccurate decision making.
3. Project Delays: When information isn’t easily accessible or is difficult to find, employees or entire teams find themselves struggling to meet project deadlines or even missing them completely. From a customer’s point of view, this creates frustration and even decreases their trust in the organization, potentially impact that organizations revenue and reputation.
4. Frustration: If an employee is expected to constantly navigate their way between multiple platforms, they will eventually reach a point of frustration. When employees reach this point what normally follows is them feeling inefficient, a decreased in their morale, a dip in their productivity and eventually leaving the organization.
Financial Waste
A report by McKinsey states that each employee spends around 1.8 hours of their work day searching for information (Crawford, 2022). That’s just over one work day per 5-day work week.
1. Revenue: There is a direct correlation between employee productivity and revenue. If employees are wasting over a day’s worth of work time per week the organization is not only losing out on the revenue opportunities during that time, but are also paying for that day of unproductivity and potentially paying for overtime or additional resources to assist in reaching deadlines. This can cause delays in project delivery, delays in responding to clients and missed opportunities.
2. Climbing Operational Costs: Inefficiencies of any kind, in this case with siloed platforms, will likely result in increases in operational costs. This could be because additional resources are needed to either reach project deadlines, assist in finding the information necessary to respond to clients or these additional resources are needed to assist the organization in taking advantage of potential opportunities.
3. Opportunity Costs: All the time wasted by employees on navigating their way through siloed platforms could be used more efficiently. This time could be put towards completing tasks to a higher standard, assisting additional customer queries, taking advantage of time-sensitive opportunities, and so on.
Strategies to Break Down Silos
1. Move all existing siloed platforms or a large portion of them to a single platform.
2. Choose a master platform that has the ability to either replace multiple of your siloed platforms OR has the ability to integrate into your multiple siloed platforms leaving you with a single structured view into all the information available on those siloed platforms by only logging into the 1 master platform.
Contact us to help, we have industry leading platforms that go above and beyond and can be tailored to your organisations’ needs.
References:
Crawford, H. (2022) Research shows that searching for information at work wastes time and money, ArticleCube. Available at: https://www.articlecube.com/research-shows-searching-information-work-wastes-time-and-money
