System integration: how to stop entering data twice

A new customer is registered in the CRM system, then in the finance system, then in an Excel sheet for follow-up. Every time there is a risk of errors, and every time it takes time. Double data entry is one of the most common and most expensive problems we see in companies, and it can almost always be solved.

The problem in numbers

In MuleSoft's 2025 survey of more than 1,050 IT leaders, the average company had 897 applications. Only 29 percent of them were integrated with each other, and only 2 percent of organizations had connected more than half of their systems.^[1]

The same survey shows that 80 percent see data integration as their biggest obstacle, and that IT departments spend 39 percent of their time building custom integrations.^[1] In smaller companies without their own IT department, the work instead falls on employees, who transfer information by hand.

Signs that you need to integrate

• The same customer, order or item exists in several systems, with different details.
• Employees export and import files to move data between systems.
• Reports take days to compile because the information lives in several places.
• Nobody knows for sure which system holds the correct information.

Start with the information, not the connections

The first step is to decide which system owns which information. Customer details might be owned by the CRM system, invoices by the finance system and stock levels by the ERP system. Once each type of information has a clear owner, it becomes clear in which direction data should flow. A simple information model, showing which concepts the business uses and how they relate, saves a lot of work later.

Common ways to integrate

• API integrations: the systems talk directly to each other. Good when only a few systems are involved and data needs to be up to date immediately.
• Event-driven flows and webhooks: one system notifies others when something happens, for example that an order has been placed.
• Integration platform: one central place for all flows. Good when the number of systems grows and the connections would otherwise become hard to keep track of.
• Scheduled file transfers: simpler and sometimes sufficient for systems that lack modern interfaces.

Integration is the foundation for AI and automation

There is a reason integration has become an even bigger issue in recent years. In the same survey, 95 percent said they struggle to integrate AI into existing processes.^[1] AI agents and automated flows need access to data from your systems to be useful. A company with well-integrated systems can therefore adopt AI considerably faster.

How to get started

1. List your systems and which information lives in which.
2. Draw how information flows today and where it is transferred by hand.
3. Decide which system owns each type of information.
4. Start with the flow that costs the most time or causes the most errors.
5. Build the integration, test it and measure how much time it saves.