Data consolidation is critical for success as businesses technologies constantly evolve in order to realize the additional revenue opportunities that exist within your data but are not currently visible. A strategy must be focused on your current needs, future plans, and the business processes you’re accustomed to all while avoiding non-integrated applications.

Data silos have been created over time and across technologies, acquired, and learned in the lifecycle of your company. Data needs periodic pruning, nurturing, and segmentation to expose new opportunities across divisions. Creating a universal view; exposed to all users, avoids miscommunications. This also provides a view to all communications throughout the company.

Consolidation offers potential worth considering.

The excitement of new applications, emerging cloud technologies, and green field site development is quickly replaced with the need to maintain, update, and upgrade systems. This of course is needed to keep the business operational, competitive and servicing customers.

The result of data growth is that different practices develop to support different business processes, units, and applications. Technologies were selected for good reasons in the past with new developments offering a rich selection of options. However, over time, growth can show a dark side. Changing business and technological needs, personnel turnover, regulatory changes, and other external and internal factors can fragment the data. The best response is to consolidate processes, technologies, and suppliers in order to improve manageability and have more flexibility going ahead.

There are clear financial gains to be achieved in a scalable, dynamic platform that will work seamlessly across divisions from the cloud. Performance can be measured in different ways, depending on what the needs are regardless of foresight. For example:

• Accessibility across all locations reduces overhead and operational costs associated with hosting multiple data applications.  
• Consolidating software requirements onto the cloud can eliminate hardware server costs.

But data consolidation doesn’t stop with systems and software. When processes or applications are consolidated, the data can ensure more consistent service across businesses. For example:

• Consolidating core business applications such as order processing, inventory management, invoicing, management reports, marketing, project management, and CRM needs, makes support and upgrades unnecessary. So rather than having multiple email or database platforms for various departments, one system will serve the entire organization.
• Consolidation can simplify and reduce errors in system processes such as data protection services, security, network services, and database management costs.
• Consolidation should also examine the business processes themselves and redefine roles and procedures which will improve productivity while saving employee overhead.

Consolidation allows rapid and valuable growth.

Changes in the business often drive feelings of discomfort. These changes can include acquisition of new businesses that need to be integrated, introduction of new business units, new ways of transacting business, interfacing with customers and suppliers, and complying with new industry or legal guidelines.

The reality is that all decisions must have a clear strategy as to how the system infrastructure can and will be consolidated. Without such a plan in place the inevitable system silos will continue and system sprawl will become a real challenge.

One of the key goals of all IT evolution is to stop being a line item cost to the business by taking advantage of synergies. To start emerging as a partner that can add value and create opportunities for the business.

Let’s look at an example: consider a business establishing itself in a new geography. A cloud solution would need to be replicated for the acquired entity. The way forward would be to consolidate existing resources in order to support the additional resources needed. This again requires a scalable dynamic system adaptable to bringing data and processes onto the existing platform.

Build in flexibility to better utilize resources.

When consolidating resources or processes there should be no surprises. Use system import tools to map the infrastructure and identify the necessary elements. Then IT will have to illustrate where and what data is being stored. Above all the plan must ensure that changes in the system infrastructure will not cause a loss or degradation of current processes, data, and services.

Many organizations have been consolidating their system infrastructure and data with Cool Life CRM over the last ten years. When properly implemented, infrastructure is reduced while services are increased.

Consider implementing your company on a system that insures a SECURE, INTUITIVE and FAST platform.

It is advisable to identify all the elements that must be consolidated at any given time. This enables better phasing and reduces risk as systems are implanted and deployed. For continuous and long-term improvement, users must plan and schedule with the Cool Life CRM Implementation Team to perform the following tasks:

• Migrate the infrastructure to a SECURE cloud environment.
• Identify specific infrastructure support liaisons.
• Review alternative approaches to ensure that implementations are future-ready.
• Train on the platform as a database administrator; learning how to use file systems and archival requirements to ensure they are sustainable and deliver the required access of information resources securely.
• Platforms with a view offer consolidation of business critical applications often viewed as time savers by being natively intergraded.
• Schedule team leaders and users to be trained ensuring complete user adoption.

Consolidation delivers real returns. Embarking along this route ensures systems are aligned to the business and enables new technologies to be implemented effectively.