The Importance of Interdepartmental Visibility

Collaboration. Interdepartmental visibility. Internal alignment. While these might have become overused buzzwords, they are critical concepts that will have an impact on your organization’s productivity and profitability. 

Interdepartmental visibility has become more important than ever as enterprises collect and manage massive amounts of data. 

While each department needs specific data sets to fulfill its responsibilities, there is a great deal of overlap. For instance, tax, compliance, and legal departments will need access to the same basic client or vendor data. When interdepartmental visibility is low, these teams may not have access to this critical data. 

Alternatively, they might have access to relevant data, but the information available through each group’s interface does not align with the data accessible to other departments. This can create a world of headaches for your business, including compliance issues, missed deadlines, and a poor client experience. 

What Is Interdepartmental Visibility?

Generally speaking, interdepartmental visibility refers to a state in which each department can access and share information with other departments across an organization. If interdepartmental visibility is low, your departments will struggle to share critical information or collaborate. 

High interdepartmental visibility facilitates internal alignment. When everyone knows what other teams are doing and what information they possess, all of your staff can get on the same page. They can work together harmoniously to achieve organizational goals and better serve clients, vendors, and other stakeholders.

The key to achieving interdepartmental visibility is eliminating data silos. Data silos are formed when each team or department gathers and stores information on separate technology platforms. Since each department uses its own software or set of platforms, the data it has access to may not match the information available to other teams. 

Challenges that Arise When Visibility Is Low

When there is a lack of visibility between departments, you are likely to encounter a multitude of challenges, including the following:

Reduced Collaboration

When your teams are using incompatible systems, collaborating with one another will be a major pain point. However, collaboration is critical for entity management and compliance. 

Your tax, compliance, and legal departments must be able to share information, communicate, and cooperate in order to meet deliverable deadlines and keep your organization in good standing.

If you want to foster a collaborative culture, you must focus on increasing interdepartmental visibility. The first step to doing so involves eliminating data silos and adopting a single source of information, but more on that below.

Decreased Productivity

Your tax, legal, and compliance teams will be most productive when they can leverage one another's distinct sets of talents and capabilities. Conversely, when a lack of interdepartmental visibility makes it hard for these teams to share information and collaborate, productivity will suffer. 

Compliance Issues

The burden of achieving and maintaining compliance does not fall solely on your compliance team. Compliance is everyone's responsibility. Your legal and tax teams must complete reports in a timely fashion and submit this data to the relevant regulatory authorities. 

A lack of interdepartmental visibility will lead to a multitude of compliance-related issues. Your team may struggle to adhere to emerging reporting and disclosure requirements, miss deadlines, and open your business up to severe civil penalties. 

A Lack of Alignment

When your organization is in a state of alignment, each team member understands their individual roles and responsibilities. More importantly, they understand how they fit into the organization’s overall business strategy. 

Alignment and interdepartmental visibility go hand in hand. If visibility is high, your teams will likely be aligned. The opposite is also true, which is why you must prioritize interdepartmental visibility. 

How You Can Promote Visibility and Internal Alignment 

Eliminating data silos can be achieved in one of two ways. The first approach involves integrating disparate systems and aggregating data. While this approach can improve internal alignment and visibility, there are a few shortfalls.

Foremost, integrating technologies can be tedious, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. If your IT team does not have the resources and capabilities to handle the integration, you will need to bring in an outside firm. While such a team can streamline the integration process, its services typically come at a high price.

The bigger concern that arises with this approach is that the integrations are likely to be imperfect, especially if you are using antiquated technologies and on-premises solutions. Therefore, data silos may still exist, albeit on a far more limited scale.

Fortunately, you can completely eradicate data silos and maximize interdepartmental visibility by adopting Athennian’s cloud-based entity management software. This platform unifies core processes, including tax, legal, governance, entity management, and compliance. 

Our solution is superior to many other options available because it enables your departments to share information while working from the same platform. Because Athennian’s solution is cloud-based, it can also effectively integrate with other software in your technology stack. 

Maximize Visibility with Athennian’s Entity Management Software

Are you ready to eliminate visibility roadblocks and promote internal alignment? Looking for a dynamic entity management software that can meet your organization’s needs now — and for years to come? Want to experience the only five-star entity management solution on the market?

We invite you to explore Athennian’s entity management software. Our platform includes the tools, capabilities, and features you need to simplify entity management so that you can save time, reduce costs, improve productivity, and protect business continuity. 

To get started, schedule your customized demo with one of our entity management experts. 

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“When we were reviewing other entity management systems on the market, in some cases, we were not comparing apples to apples. But with Athennian, there was really no comparison. The paralegals were so excited to come on board.”

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