Information Silos Hamper Service
Ever hear of the Information Age? According to Wikipedia, it is “a historical period that began in the mid-20th century, characterized by a rapid epochal shift from traditional industry established by the Industrial Revolution to an economy primarily based upon information technology”. I think we can all agree with that – there is information all around us. We can access it through our phones, we can access it from our office, home or car, and we seem to get bombarded with it throughout our day.
But have you also noticed that information is compartmentalized? A lot of information really isn’t freely accessible … you pay to get to it. Any web page that makes you log in to access that information comes at a price. Whether it be an actual payment or having to endure advertising, that information really isn’t free.
But there an even stranger situation. Dennis in one department types a lot of information into the company’s CRM—information about customers, about purchase orders, or about service contracts for example. Janice, in another department, could use some of that information to do her job better or more efficiently. But she doesn’t have access to it.
Sure, some data is sensitive. Obviously and Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or Protected Health Information (PII) would fall into that category. But, if both Dennis and Janice are in the business of providing products and services for the betterment of that customer, there is no reason there should be an issue. Or is there?
It turns out that a lot of companies artificially hamstring employees, inadvertently, because of the cost of access to that data – the company’s own data. When you enter data into one vendor’s system, that data winds up under the protective shield of that vendor. Yes, you own the data, but the vendor is going to charge you some money to let your teammates access that data. How odd! Your own data, siloed, accessible to Janice only with the addition of another regular monthly payment.
maiData is setting out on a path to address the data silos that have hampered service organizations for years. In a recent informal market survey, we found that the majority of companies that deploy large CRM systems limit the number of licenses available, especially to lower-level employees or employees in departments not focused on entering data or analyzing it.
Watch maiData in the coming days as we show the world how service organizations can supercharge their rank-and-file service technicians and field engineers, empowering them with the data that their organizations already have stored in databases.