Selecting an optimal best-of-breed system represents one of the most critical decisions for any company looking to purchase new software. A best-of-breed system is one that best meets the need of a specific business function. This might be Salesforce (Customer Relationship Management), Quickbooks (Accounting) and ADP (human resources).
Choosing a best-of-breed software solution can have a number of advantages:
1. Getting the best product for the job
Best-of-breed systems will address business needs in the most complete way. For instance, Salesforce provides solutions for most of the business challenges faced by salespeople. When it falls short, applications that sync with Salesforce can further tailor to any needed experience.
2. Working with specialized vendors
Each vendor will likely understand your business pain points better. Quickbooks, for instance, provides financial management solutions to tens of millions of small businesses. Their support teams are likely well equipped to answer questions regarding specific business challenges because they have seen them before.
3. Receiving continuous updates
Most best-of-breed systems need to continuously grow to meet customer demands. That’s how they maintain their best-of-breed status! Current updates to improve software will likely lead to better experiences for customers.
However, best-of-breed systems also have a number of disadvantages:
1. Increasing complexity
Using Salesforce, Quickbooks and ADP for your business? Get ready to manage the complexity of multiple systems and multiple vendors. Doing so can require a tremendous amount of time and energy from your team.
2. Training
Managing complexity is one thing; learning how to get the most out of all these systems is another. Many best-of-breed systems require users to upskill and keep up their understanding of individual systems. Training becomes more complex if you work in an industry with high turnover.
3. Data Integrity
This drawback is critical. With multiple systems, you must manage multiple sources of data. How is this data stored? Can it be organized in a way that produces actionable insights for a given team? Answering these questions are critical before selecting new best-of-breed software solutions.
One potential method of improving the data integrity from multiple best-of-breed systems is to integrate all the data in one safe, well-organized location such as a data management platform.
True Interaction built SYNAPTIK, our Business Process Automation Platform, specifically to make manage core business processes like data cleaning to enhance the data integrity of digital systems. For more information or a demo, please visit us at https://synaptik.co/ or email us at hello@www.true.design
