Bring All Your Data Together
by Rick Kostopoulos
When we say associates need to work together as a team, the same exists for data. To be effective, data needs to “pulling on all oars at the same time.” A major challenge our industry faces today is organizing data to work for us, not against us. We have all encountered it: multiple misspellings of company names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, titles, and detailed event information within multiple data repositories within the company. Combining all disjointed data into one system eliminates many issues companies face daily.
As an example, consider a query for all Chief Financial Officers in the state of Arizona across four databases:
- Our QuickBooks customer file
- Our Salesforce customer file
- Our registration customer file
- Our project customer spreadsheet
Inconsistencies arise as one database lists chief financial officer as CFO, another as C.F.O., and yet another misspells it as “cheif” financial officer. Therefore, our query requires multiple conditional responses, or what we refer to as .OR. statements. Managing these misspellings and interpretations becomes a daunting task, if not an impossible one.
Eliminating data redundancy gives you and your internal staff more predictive analysis capabilities, along with structuring your system with the AI capabilities needed to move forward in today’s rapidly changing business environment.
The effect on the employee is a given; it is indeed common sense. But let’s touch on the magic of AI and the reason for the elimination of data redundancy.
There is a lot of talk about the magic of AI today, but it’s not all that magical. Its results are based on facts, and if it can’t find facts, it tends to make educated guesses. That said, when it comes to conditional responses (.OR. statements) regarding Chief Financial Officers, we can tolerate the fact that our marketing department might miss a few. However, when AI begins setting up automated processes to accelerate our accounts receivable collection (cash flow) or planning our next marketing campaign based on trending products, we need to be cautious. Can we really afford to make those missteps, especially when our progressive competitors are unlikely to make them?
Reevaluating how you do business is never easy. Separating facts from statements like “I think our data is pretty good” is crucial. Don’t fool yourself — if you have four to six different systems from various providers, you’re dealing with a typical nightmare scenario in our industry today. You need to reevaluate your business practices, especially if you want to scale and grow.
In closing, we believe every company should have a clear understanding of how their lifeblood: their corporate data, is structured. Take the time to review all of your systems and data sources to eliminate redundancies. NewGen Business Systems is an event business systems technology group with decades of experience in the ERP space. Reach out to us anytime for a free consultation regarding your internal event business technologies.
Rick Kostopoulos is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) expert who has spoken at major universities on the subject. His company, NewGen Business Solutions, is the author of ConventionSuite, built on the world’s #1 Cloud ERP, Oracle NetSuite. NewGen was recently named Oracle NetSuite Partner of the Year in 2023. ConventionSuite is an event services package currently used by builders, GSCs, venues, TUCS, and I&Ds. Its foundation is NetSuite, a well-thought-out ERP that includes CRM, projects, case management, payroll, payables, purchase orders, accounts receivable, sales orders, fixed assets, inventory, and general ledger. NetSuite is used by 37,000+ companies worldwide.
For more information visit conventionsuite.com or email sales@newgennow.com
This story originally appeared in the Q3 2024 issue of Exhibit City News, p. 62. For original layout, visit https://issuu.com/exhibitcitynews/docs/ecn_q3_2024/62.
