If your team types the same customer, order or product details into more than one system, you are paying for the same work twice and inviting mistakes every time.
How to spot it
- Staff copy data between screens or spreadsheets.
- Totals differ between systems and someone reconciles them monthly.
- Customer details are out of date somewhere.
- New starters are taught which system to update in which order.
Why it happens
Tools were adopted one at a time to solve one problem each, and nobody connected them. Each decision was reasonable; the sum is not.
How to remove it
- Choose a single system of record for each type of data.
- Integrate other systems to read from, or sync with, that source.
- Automate hand-offs such as order to invoice.
- Validate at entry to stop bad data spreading.
Start with the most expensive duplication
Pick the one that wastes the most time or causes the most errors. Fix that, measure, then continue.