How it shows up
A customer, an order, a delivery, a price. Each department keeps its own copy. Someone re-types it because the systems do not speak, or because they speak badly.
Why it happens
Systems were bought for departmental jobs: quoting, shipping, accounting. The company never bought a way for a fact to travel. People became the interface.
If nothing changes
Every re-entry consumes time, introduces errors, creates another version of truth, and delays the next department.
Money
Wrong prices, duplicate orders, credits, and write-offs that started as a typing difference.
Time
The next department cannot start until someone finishes copying.
People
Skilled staff spend hours on transcription. That is not why you hired them.
Process
There is no authoritative record. Arguments start with 'my screen says'.
Customers
They are promised inventory, dates, or prices the other system cannot confirm.
Risk
Audit and compliance rest on whichever copy someone trusted that day.
Growth
Each new channel or warehouse multiplies the copies.
Questions worth asking
How many times is a customer or an order typed in a single cycle?
Where do the copies first diverge?
Who is asked to reconcile them, and how often?
What waits while that reconciliation happens?
Which copy does the customer experience?
When it is working
The object (quote, order, job, invoice) is the same object as it moves. Departments see the slice they need. Corrections propagate. Nobody is paid to be a USB cable.
What we might actually do
Integration
Often the whole job. Connect systems that already work. Do not replace them for sport.
Shared operational record
When no system owns the object that actually moves through the company.
Data capture
Enter at the source. Stop downstream re-keying.
A narrow application
Only for the gap that standard software will not hold.
When software is the wrong first move
- Two systems already share the data and the team still re-types out of habit. That is adoption.
- Master data has no owner. Integrating garbage copies garbage.
- The business cannot name which system is allowed to be right.
Where we see it
Roles this hits
Related problems
Selected work
Comparable files are walked through in a working session. We do not invent percentages for the website.
Describe the process as it runs. A specification is optional.