ERP, Email, Project Management, Accounting Software, Document Management, Financial Data, Cloud, SAAS, Non Structured Information, SQL... we could continue this list for a while to represent the sum of different systems coexisting in most of the organisations we are working with and which all represent a significative Data Source of Information.
As a manager, they represent a source of information but in most cases they represent a potential loss of information because it takes ages to reconcile data contained in one system with data of another system. How many times did you realized that the Project Manager in your ERP was not the one indicated in your financial system?
But if you consider how your data are saved across your organisation, you need to mix various sources of data, cross them and reconcile them accordingly to obtain the expected information. This process, simple in appearance, is always made complex in reality because of discrepancies among different systems, different sources, especially those which were certified 100% bullet proof!
The various attempts proposed by IT have failed until now despite the large investments and we do not see in the short term any major improvements coming from traditional approaches.
