Why Am I Entering the Same Information Into Multiple Systems?

If you regularly enter the same customer, order, project, or employee information into more than one application, there is probably an opportunity to improve the way your systems work together.

This happens in businesses of every size. A customer fills out a form on your website, someone receives the submission by email, the information is copied into a spreadsheet, some of it is entered into another application, and another employee is notified that the request has arrived.

Each step may have made sense when it was introduced. Over time, however, those steps can become an accepted part of the job even when they no longer need to be.

Follow the information

Start with the information rather than the software.

Suppose a customer submits their name, email address, phone number, and reason for contacting you through your website.

Where does that information go next?

If an employee has to read the email and manually enter the same information into your CRM, ask why. If the information is then copied into a spreadsheet for tracking, ask what the spreadsheet provides that the CRM does not. If another employee needs some of the same information in another application, look at how it gets there.

Following one piece of information through the business can reveal how much manual work is happening simply because your systems are not sharing what they already know.

Manual entry creates more than extra work

Entering the same information several times takes time, but that is not the only concern.

It also creates more opportunities for information to become inconsistent.

A phone number might be updated in one system but not another. Someone may mistype an email address while copying it. A spreadsheet may contain an older version of information that has already changed somewhere else.

Eventually, employees may not know which system contains the most current information.

That can create problems for reporting, customer service, billing, follow-ups, and other parts of the business that depend on accurate information.

Find out why the duplicate work exists

Before changing the process, understand why employees are doing it.

The spreadsheet may exist because the primary software does not provide a useful view of the information. Someone may manually review every website submission because some requests require special attention. Another application may need the information but have no direct connection to the system where it originates.

Those are different problems and may require different solutions.

The goal should not be to eliminate a step simply because it is manual. The goal is to understand whether the person performing that step is adding something useful.

If an employee is making a meaningful decision, that review may need to remain. If the employee is simply copying a name and phone number from one screen to another, there may be a better way.

Decide where the information should live

It also helps to determine which system should be responsible for the information.

If your CRM is where customer records are maintained, for example, it may make sense for new customer information to reach that system without someone having to re-enter it.

Other applications may still need access to the information, but that does not necessarily mean employees should maintain separate copies by hand.

Thinking this through can reduce confusion about which information is current and where employees should go when they need it.

You may not need new software

Duplicate data entry often leads businesses to assume that one of their applications needs to be replaced.

Sometimes it does. Often it does not.

Your website may be doing its job. Your CRM may be doing its job. Your accounting software may be doing its job. The problem may simply be that information has no easy way to move between them.

Connecting existing tools or automating a few predictable steps may remove a surprising amount of work without forcing employees to learn an entirely new system.

Before replacing software, follow the information through your current process. Find where people are re-entering something the business already knows, understand why they are doing it, and decide what you would prefer to happen instead.

You may find that the problem is not the software itself. It is what happens between the software.