Double data entry is one of those problems everyone accepts until it starts breaking things.
Sales updates a CRM. Operations copies the same data into another system.
Finance exports everything to Excel. Someone inevitably forgets a step. Suddenly you are debugging human behavior instead of software.
Why double data entry keeps happening. Most companies do not suffer from a lack of tools. They suffer from too many tools that do not talk to each other.
Typical setup:
- CRM for customers
- ERP or planning tool for operations
- Accounting software for finance
- A few Excel files in between
Each system works fine on its own. The problem starts at the boundaries.
The real cost is not time. Time loss is obvious, but the bigger problems are:
- Inconsistent data across systems
- Bugs caused by outdated or incomplete information
- No single source of truth
- People losing trust in “the system”
Once trust is gone, people create their own workarounds. That is when things really spiral.
You often do not need a new system. The default reaction is often: replace everything. In practice, that is rarely necessary.
In many cases, one small API integration already solves most of the pain:
- Data is entered once
- Updates are synced automatically
- Each system keeps doing what it is good at
- No big migration. No massive rewrite.
A simple integration beats a complex rebuild
What works well in practice:
- Identify one clear data owner (for example the CRM)
- Expose or consume a clean API endpoint
- Sync only what is actually needed
- Add basic validation and logging
That is it.
No fancy architecture diagrams. No over engineering. When this approach works best. This approach is especially effective when:
- Teams already like their existing tools
- Only a few processes cause friction
- Errors have a direct business impact
- You want quick, measurable improvement
It is not about perfection. It is about removing unnecessary manual steps.
Final thought:
Most double data entry problems are not organizational issues. They are integration problems. Fix the data flow, and a lot of “process issues” disappear automatically.
If you are interested in practical examples of this approach in real projects, we work on this kind of integration regularly at Byte Me
Top comments (0)