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December is the time when companies send Christmas cards to their business relations as a gesture of good tidings. Frequently, but unintentionally, numerous cards are sent to the same person, which can be embarrassing and painful! Since this reflects the level of data integration in your organization. How good is your IT integration today?
Companies all over the world struggle every day with the consequences of poor ERP integration. Most of them use multiple systems for these different domains. Often implemented in a ‘siloed’ approach. The integration between those sub-systems is at best poor. Or worse: nonexistent! Quite often, the official system of record is accompanied by dozens of individual registrations in Excel and Access. Which function as stand-alone. But we also see situations where the integral ERP systems are used in a non-integral way. A consequence of all these scenarios is a redundancy of data.
It is precisely the distribution of Christmas cards that makes these duplications in your data painfully visible. Not just for you, but especially for your customers, prospects, and vendors. What impression do you give them of your company? How do they estimate the professionalism of your organization? Or does it perhaps explain the many mistakes your company makes during the year?
Obviously, the damage due to sending several Christmas cards is forgivable. And the cost of the additional envelopes and stamps is overseeable. But it becomes a completely different story when it comes to incorrect deliveries, specifications that deviate from the agreements made, and invoices sent to the wrong addresses. The reality is that your customers are willing to switch suppliers for less nowadays.
The good news is that December is the best time of the year to make good intentions for the new year. So, if your Christmas card action exhibits these kinds of characteristics, it might be a very good idea to rank the modernization of your ERP systems high on your list of good intentions for 2022!