The modern global economy is massive, complicated, and increasingly driven by business intelligence derived from the seemingly unlimited data streams generated by doing business.

Embracing concepts like centralised data and single source of truth is vital for companies' decision makers, their Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and their teams, wanting to improve their business decisions through effective data management.

Organising information systems can be challenging for any type of business. However, with a thorough understanding of core concepts such as a single source of truth, you can craft a data management strategy that breaks free from outdated paradigms and provides your stakeholders with the clean, complete, and easily accessible data they require to make strategic and timely business decisions.

What is a Single Source of Truth

Single source of truth is a concept that a company can apply as part of its information architecture to ensure that everyone in the organisation uses the same data when making business decisions. 

As with many other business processes, your company’s approach to data management provides more value and savings when it’s well optimised.

On a positive note – survey participants who increased their investments in data quality consistently reported business-wide performance gains. As noted in this chart from RingLead, here 9 important reasons why you need to keep high quality data records:

In this instance, the value comes from better access to data. Data that is also more complete and shared in an integrated data environment rather than a segregated data environment, resulting in more timely insights.

Simultaneously, process improvement and the removal of various barriers to efficiency and accuracy result in both immediate and long-term savings.

Companies that employ tools and procedures that pull data from a single source of truth, i.e., a centralised, complete, shared data environment shared by apps and the user base, are ready to capture that value and savings.

Centralised data solution way of thinking

Managing data from a single source of truth is essential to managing all the data flowing in and out of your business to derive accurate and effective business intelligence.

Centralising data assists in the development of a unified data strategy:

• You know where all of the data is,

• You have clear supervision over compliance and privacy,

• You gain insight into how and whether the data is being utilised, and you can improve the data consuming experience.

In general, you have a clear view of how, where, and why that data was obtained. This is easily achieved by the mechanics of gathering data and selecting where it will reside.

A consolidated data platform streamlines the approach to a single source of truth and, more importantly, provides a mechanism to enable individuals to harness the potential of data.

Example:

Assume your company has assembled together a software environment from a variety of software platforms. You utilise accounting software, an office suite, marketing software, a customer relationship management system (CRM system), and a legacy inventory management application.

These various data sources contain a variety of important information, but much (or possibly most) of it is siloed, necessitating conversion, importing, or some other type of transformation to allow Application A to communicate with Application B.

Unlimited possibilities of centralised data

The shift to centralised data isn't just about avoiding inefficient, opaque data silos, as well as compliance and privacy issues.

It first and foremost helps in achieving what most businesses want from their data: telling a compelling tale, justifying a business choice or strategy, attributing marketing spend, or understanding the whole user/customer experience from a single source of truth.

Bad data is expensive. It costs money to acquire, money to store and (mis)manage, and money to lose when sales are lost.

According to a survey by research firm Gartner, "organisations believe poor data quality to be responsible for an average of $15 million per year in losses." Gartner also found that nearly 60% of those surveyed didn't know how much bad data costs their businesses because they don't measure it in the first place.

Centralised information indicates that the whole business operates from the same blueprint, reducing inconsistencies caused by separate data and various technologies.

However, it is also about the future and being able to harness the proper data for more sophisticated use cases. It is impossible to broaden the area of applications that can be produced when data is siloed, constrained, or untrustworthy.

Perhaps more crucially, when the data infrastructure itself suppresses innovation and growth, extending beyond present use cases is impossible.

Conclusion:

As a decision maker, do you have access to the business intelligence you require for successful risk management, strategic sourcing, and long-term planning?

If not, it's time to use data integration to streamline, organise, and communicate more effectively.

The CommerceCore™ Merchant Operating System offers a single out-of-the-box solution that links Odoo to a growing number of online store systems and marketplaces. This will avoid data duplication and offer data integrity within a single source of truth.

By implementing a centralised data source, your business can make sounder, more informed decisions based on reliable information. This will help you stay ahead of industry changes, identify new opportunities, and better serve your customers.

If you’re ready to take your business operations to the next level, schedule a demo or contact us today. We’d be happy to show you how the CommerceCore™ Merchant Operating System can put your business on the path to success.