In businesses of all sizes, “data silos” can become a major bottleneck. A data silo is anywhere that important data is stored but isn’t available to the people that need it, or is only available to a select few people (thus increasing their workload when that particular data needs to be manipulated).
It’s easier to explain with an example. Say that a small business receives a few dozen hard copy invoices from various suppliers and vendors over the course of a month (e.g., parts suppliers). When those invoices are sitting on someone’s desk, they’re in a “data silo,” since nobody else has access to the information. Most business owners would agree that it’s never a good idea to have limited visibility into their current financial liabilities!
Nevertheless, this kind of thing happens all the time. Let’s take a moment to explore how Xerox Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help.
How Xerox RPA Can Reduce or Eliminate Data Silos in Small Business Workplaces
Xerox Robotic Process Automation is a technology that helps automate tasks, typically the manipulation of data, between two sources that typically aren’t designed to interact. The term “robotic” is used in this case because the technology is very good at automating repeatable, rule-based tasks—things that take a human half an hour might take an RPA system less than a second, with the added benefit of less risk of error.
The aforementioned example of invoices sitting on someone’s desk is a very common example of a data silo in a small business. Xerox RPA can help both reduce the time it takes to process the invoices and increase the visibility of the information in the invoices to the people who need to see it (such as the business owner).
Imagine the staff member scans the invoices and, automatically with RPA, the details are added to their bookkeeping software (such as QuickBooks) and, for any invoices over a certain threshold, say $500, a copy of the invoices is sent to the business owner. All this, just by scanning the physical hard copies once.
Never Mix Up a Customer’s Details Again by Using Xerox RPA To Help Synchronize CRM Data
If your organization uses a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, such as Salesforce or HubSpot, you know that it makes life easier… until, somehow, data gets “out of sync.”
For example, imagine that a customer updates any one piece of their contact information, such as billing address or phone number. If you need this information in various tools and platforms you use, as most businesses do, someone has to go in and manually update the customer information not only in the CRM, but everywhere else, such as accounting software, payment gateways, shipping and fulfillment systems, and so on.
Xerox RPA could instead have a “bot” configured to watch your CRM for changes to a customer’s information. Once updated in that singular location, the bot would then go out to all the other places you need to update and do it for you, automatically.
Find Out More About How Modern Automation Tools From Xerox Will Enhance Efficiency at Your Organization
If the time-saving scenarios here sounded interesting to you, just know that RPA is really the tip of the iceberg insofar as what Xerox can do for your organization. If you’re interested in learning more about automation or you’ve decided it’s time for an office equipment upgrade, our team of polite professionals are here to help. Please feel free to contact us today or request a free quote.
