Technology
Almost every disappointing technology purchase in advisory firms traces to one word doing four different jobs on the same slide.
Vendors use "integration" to describe arrangements ranging from genuine two-way data flow to a link that opens the other product in a new tab. Both appear on the same slide, with the same logo, under the same heading.
Almost every disappointing technology purchase in advisory firms traces to this gap.
A link. One system opens another. No data moves. This is a bookmark.
Sign-on. One set of credentials reaches both. Convenient, and still no data moves.
One-way sync. Data flows from one system to the other, usually on a schedule, usually a subset of fields. Useful, and the direction and the subset are the whole story.
Two-way sync. Both systems update from a change in either. Genuinely valuable, genuinely rare, and it raises a question every firm should ask: when they disagree, which one wins?
Which specific fields move, in which direction, how often. What happens when a record exists in one system and not the other. What happens when both change between syncs. Who is responsible when the data is wrong — because the answer is usually neither vendor.
And ask for a firm currently running it, rather than a diagram.
A partial integration is often worse than none. When nothing is connected, staff know to check both systems. When something is connected, they assume it worked. The errors that follow are silent and compound.
Most firms do not want integrations. They want one set of records that is right. Every additional system is another place the truth can be, and the effort of keeping several systems in agreement is a permanent cost that never appears in any comparison.
Questions this did not answer? Ask them directly — that is what the twenty minutes is for.
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