Integrated IT solutions are Better for Small Businesses

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Peter-Christoph Haider on 01/28/2016.

If you’re a small business owner whose business is growing rapidly, you will inevitably reach the point where it makes sense to invest in a software solution to automate your business. As you survey the different software offerings, you will find that most vendors will offer either a point solution or an integrated software suite.

What’s the difference?

The term ‘point solution’ refers to the practice of choosing software that specializes in a specific area of the business. Buyers choose what they consider to be the ‘best’ software product for each department, even if the software products come from different vendors. It's for this reason that this practice is also called the 'best of breed' approach.

In contrast, an integrated software solution is a software offering that comes from a single vendor or platform. This integrated offering covers multiple parts of the business through different modules that are designed to work together as one integrated suite.

Why is an Integrated Solution Better for Small Businesses?

Integrated solutions are the obvious choice for small businesses for several reasons.

1. An integrated solution ensures that different modules or components work together seamlessly

When you use a ‘best of breed’ approach, you take on the burden of bridging the gaps that exist between the two or more software products you’ve selected.

For example, when you record a sale in the POS (Point-of-Sale) system that you purchased from one vendor, you still need to feed a record of that sale into your inventory system. Without that data feed, your inventory system will not have the correct inventory balance for the products that were sold. Thus, businesses that use ‘ point solutions’ will need to either build a customized data integration feed or define manual workarounds that lead to double data entry.

In contrast, an integrated software solution that offers both a POS and an inventory management system will work seamlessly, with data on sales and product returns from the POS automatically updating your inventory balances. No additional IT integration investments are needed, and your work processes won't need to rely on error-prone, manual workarounds.

2. An integrated solution will have an integrated upgrade path

The vendors of ‘best of breed’ solutions work independently and release upgrades of their software according to their respective schedules. Thus, when one vendor releases a new version, you have no guarantee that this new version will not break your existing processes or require an update to your custom-built data integration feed.

In contrast, an integrated software suite has an integrated upgrade path. The new release of one module is guaranteed to continue working with other modules within the same suite or platform. Compatibility and interoperability issues are handled for you. You won’t have to worry about your business processes breaking when you upgrade to the new version.

3. An integrated solution means you only need to talk to one vendor

If you’ve ever built a house or renovated an office with the help of multiple contractors, this issue will be all-too-familiar. One contractor can blame another for delays in their work. Any of the contractors can say “that’ s not part of my contract” when there's previously unspecified work that needs to be done.

You open yourself to the same frustrating situation when you opt to use ‘point solutions’ from multiple vendors. Each vendor will be focused only on their specific scope. Any concerns that are outside the scope of their respective systems is your problem or requires additional payment to fix.

In contrast, when you choose an integrated software suite or platform, you only deal with one primary vendor, and they can’t point the finger at anyone else if an integration issue needs to be addressed.

4. An integrated solution means lower investments in training

An integrated software suite or platform uses a consistent user interface standard across the different modules. This consistency greatly simplifies user training and reduces the time it takes to ramp up new employees.

In contrast, ‘point solutions’ that come from different vendors will naturally use their own user interface standards. Thus, each employee must learn and master an entirely new user interface with each system.

In closing

Very few small business owners have the excess cash to spend on custom-built band-aids to cobble together disparate systems that don’t talk to each other. Most can’t justify hiring one more IT guy to support these different systems and train their users. And even fewer entrepreneurs will want to spend their limited time chasing down different software vendors to fix an integration issue.

If you are a small business owner who wants a seamless, low-risk, no-fuss IT setup, then going with an integrated solution like ZeyOS is the obvious choice.