Information silos: Are they destroying your project’s success?

We live in a data-driven world – and as construction projects become more complex, sharing vital project information across project teams and with key stakeholders becomes an essential building block for success. Yet, many organizations that engage in construction projects continue to work in disconnected, disparate systems, causing information silos between teams that should otherwise be working collaboratively together to maximize project success. When they don’t, this leads to disjointed processes, data inaccuracies and errors. This misalignment across project teams ultimately drives up costs, delays schedules and can negatively impact information accuracy and quality, which ultimately impacts the health of a company’s bottom line. By both bringing people together into the same system – or by tightly integrating enterprise systems together – organizations can create a truly collaborative environment that elevates project transparency and minimizes errors and gaps to give project stakeholders the insights they may not have otherwise had. To better understand if information silos are creating a barrier to a holistic view of your company data, read on.

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What are information silos?

Information silos forms when a department or project team doesn’t share information and doesn’t receive information. Sometimes project information may be readily available to one project team, but isolated from other key project groups and often results in a severe lack of transparency, efficiency and trust within an organization. 

The Cost of Information Silos

Organizations invest heavily in data to grow their bottom line. However, data silos are a frequent problem especially among construction companies with many departments, stakeholders, vendors and complex projects that require diligent oversight and tight communication. 

While the direct costs of information silos may not be clear, there are numerous ways these silos waste company resources, reduce efficiency and erode trust between disconnected teams, including:

  1. Slow decision-making, causing an inability to take timely corrective action when necessary
  2. Compromised trust and lack of collaboration across project teams
  3. Higher project costs due to rework

Information silos produce incomplete views of essential business information. If data is siloed with different project teams and within disparate systems, this isolation keeps the organization from seeing a holistic view of a project’s activities, progress and cost.  When project teams are working within the same system and accessing the same information, they can present an accurate and holistic picture that gives key stakeholders confidence in their decisions.

Let Technology do the Heavy Lifting

With a multi-user, collaborative software platform that connects departments and disciplines throughout project planning and execution – information is instantly shared at the moment it’s entered into the system. 

Utilizing an integrated software solution enables you to free up your organization’s resources and it gives your project teams access to a 360-degree view of their data in order to glean deep, actionable insights to make informed decisions. After all, the future is in informed decisions, with unity between departments and on projects.

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