Information silos have been affecting Capital Owners for years. As most owners function on point solutions, the impact of silos can severely affect a project timeline and budgets. Capital programs involve numerous points and solutions that work harmoniously by sharing information among departments. Sadly, the lack of communication between teams and business processes forces the project towards uncertainty and often termination. That is why owners often feel the heat of information silos.
Poor business structure and stakeholder mentality are often the culprits behind information silos. When the project stakeholders feel they have no control over the information they possess, they often underestimate the impact poor information sharing can have on the project timeline.
As construction projects run on strict timelines and the, unstructured ways of information sharing can have catastrophic effects on construction projects. That’s why Capital Program Owners are always on the lookout for solutions to reduce the possibilities of silos and improve collaboration. Take a look at how information silos can lead to organizational catastrophes in capital improvement programs and can potentially derail a project.
Loss of Time and Money
Time is money, especially when you have strict delivery timelines to follow. A massive amount of information is accessed and shared by so many stakeholders – internal and external. For most capital projects, a delay of even a single day can cause a domino effect on other project operations and disrupt the work of other contractor teams. On top of that, when multiple people have access to key business information, it takes a lot of time for new process modifications to reflect across departments and people involved in the project. The whole process can cause delays in the timeline and increase the project cost of labor, raw materials, compliance, legal complexities and other business operations, which undoubtedly increases the final project cost.
Loss of Potential Value
Apart from the project delays, information silos can cost Owners a considerable amount of value As the information isn’t shared effectively with all stakeholders, the decision-makers like project managers, owners, contractors, and investors often miss out on driving value across their respective teams which trickles down to missed profit opportunities.
Distrust between Departments
It is quite possible that every stakeholder – internal and external – who is involved in the project, has a different work ethic which is one of the major reasons behind silos. In such cases, when Capital Owners aren’t aware of the roles and efforts of project managers and other departments, it often leads to distrust between them. For example, the accounting team may not understand why the field workers are facing challenges in rounding-up their daily status reports, or the planning team is struggling with meeting project milestones, and vice versa. Therefore, it is essential to have a clear view of the roles and responsibilities that can help enable transparency and improve collaboration across different project teams, ergo creating empathy between the departments and reducing silos.
Eliminating Information Silos with System Integration
When capital programs are struggling with silos and slipping further away from their project goals every month, system integration can come to the rescue. It addresses the crux of the problem viz. connecting various teams who fall back on disparate systems. By building systematic process frameworks that can work together collaboratively, technology solutions can effectively reduce the impact of silos, resolve departmental issues, optimize operations, and improve project outcomes.
Data integration, the foundation of this system, makes information sharing more ethical, regulated, safe, and comprehensible. When the information is accessed through the system by various teams in the hierarchy, all stakeholders get to access a universal view which reduces data inconsistency. It allows all teams to be more aware of their roles and responsibilities for sharing critical construction project management on the system so other departments can access it.
The data integration approach offers program managers a bird’s eye view of the latest information about project timelines, roles, scheduling, budget, tenders, bids, compliances, invoices, and accounting. In short, everything revolves around keeping capital projects on time and within budget. By integrating your systems within your existing PMIS can also help prevent data entry errors and redundancies.
There’s no denying that information silos can be catastrophic for Capital Owners handling multi-million projects. It is extremely difficult to eliminate this issue entirely with so many people involved. But having a robust system integration framework in place can help program managers to reduce existing information silos and set up a barrier to avoid more instances in the future.
At OnIndus, we help our customers to make data-driven decisions and create transparency for all key stakeholders using technology. To understand how we can help your teams drive more value with the existing technology resources and best-in-class integrated system processes, contact us via email (connect@onindus.com) or call us directly at +1 786 472 4840.