The hidden costs of disconnected systems

10 min read · Sep 2, 2025

Your organisation has likely invested in a range of software systems: a CRM, fundraising platform, grant management, event management, email marketing, accounting, productivity suite, the list goes on and on.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! Each piece of software is a specialist, and they (hopefully!) do their job well.

The downside of using so many different systems is that they don’t automatically share information. While some may have built-in integrations, others operate in isolation, unaware of the other systems in your organisation. This lack of connection creates significant, often hidden, costs.

Wasted time

Manual data entry

A supporter may make a donation on your fundraising platform, but that donation also needs to be recorded in your CRM and reconciled in your accounting software. When systems don’t talk to each other automatically, your team has to act as a human bridge, manually moving data between them.

According to a 2021 report by Zapier, 76% of office workers said they spend 1-3 hours a day simply moving data from one place to another [1]. This is time that should be spent on more impactful work.

Time-consuming reports

This manual work extends to reporting. To perform analysis, you often need to pull data from multiple systems. When these systems are disconnected, the data is siloed. Your team is forced to manually collect and combine data from each source before any analysis can even begin.

This is a major issue in the non-profit sector. A 2024 report from Sage found that manual, time-consuming reporting was the second-biggest internal challenge for non-profits [2].

Poor decision making

48% of charities struggle to use data to inform strategy and decision making [3]. One of the causes for this is the data silos disconnected systems bring.

When it’s impossible to get a unified view of your organisation, you lose the ability to make data-driven decisions and must resort to guesswork. For example, without a connection between your donation platform and CRM, it’s difficult to properly segment your supporters as part of a fundraising strategy.

Increased risk

Manual processes are inherently prone to human error. When your team is manually moving data, the chance of a mistake is much higher than when a computer moves it automatically.

83% of office workers said they spend 1-3 hours a day fixing errors [4]. Fixing these errors is a huge time sink, but that’s actually the best outcome! The errors could go unnoticed and end up silently skewing a report, which is then used to make strategic decisions.

Risk is increased further if these manual processes are held in the heads of one or two staff members. It makes your organisation very dependent on these individuals, what if they’re off sick or go on holiday?

The solution

It’s clear that disconnected systems bring a significant cost. So how do we fix it? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, but the goal is always to build a more cohesive digital infrastructure. Here are some strategies we can use:

Consolidation: reduce the number of systems you use by merging them into one. For example, migrating many separate spreadsheets into a CRM.
Integration: build connections between your existing systems. Make better use of built-in integrations, or, for more complex needs, build a custom one.
Removing redundancy: stop using systems you don’t need. If your CRM can also handle event management, maybe you don’t need separate event management software.
Data warehouse: regularly copy the data from each system into one place (called the “data warehouse”), which you can use for all your analysis and reports. This is useful when your primary challenge is caused by data living in silos.

The right path forward will likely be a combination of these approaches.

We hope you found this article useful! If you’re looking for a quick view on how optimised your digital infrastructure is, check out our free Digital Infrastructure Health Check (it only takes a minute), or if you’ve got any questions, feel free to get in touch.

References

[1] https://zapier.com/blog/report-how-office-workers-spend-time/

[2] https://www.sage.com/en-us/blog/key-findings-2024-nonprofit-tech-trends/

[3] https://charitydigitalskills.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Charity-Digital-Skills-Report-2023.pdf

[4] https://zapier.com/blog/report-how-office-workers-spend-time/