Erase Data Silos
Thursday August 21, 2008
In a meeting this morning we were talking about silos - data silos, organizational silos, informational silos - and how they get in the way. They reduce teamwork, increase costs, and curb innovation.
One of the single most important keys to getting the most out of any company is having seamless flow of information. If everyone knows what everyone else does you never have miscommunication, things never fall through the cracks, and procedural errors never happen. Unfortunately, for most companies that condition ended when they hired their second employee.
In Data Integration, The Key To Profits we explore why and how data silos exist and the specific steps you can take to remove them. Every data silo you allow to exist costs you money, decreases your flexibility, and reduces your profit.
I have been working on a website called http://www.leadingwithkindness.com which highlights 5 successful companies that also treat their employees with kindness. One of the things all of the companies is foster the sharing of information amongst employees and from upper management. It seems that these places are able to show the information because they have made it part of the culture by designing open offices and computer networks that make sharing information easy for the employees. If companies don’t make it easy for employees to share information they are less likely to be informed or inform colleagues about the most recent data and other information.