Siloed growth – where different departments pursue competing priorities and goals – is an endemic problem across B2B businesses.
As companies grow, so does internal complexity and bureaucracy. Without consistent communication, clear company-wide goals, and technology that evolves with the company, it is almost certain that siloes will develop. Curbing the rise of siloed growth in favor of a unified vision of growth is key to improving the customer experience and scaling sustainably.
Easier said than done, right? Not necessarily. Companies already have the key to unifying disparate silos and unlocking collaborative growth.
What’s the secret? Read on to find out.
Siloed Growth: Fast Facts
80%
80% of companies have a moderate or severe level of siloed data.
69%
69% of companies cannot present a unified customer view.
Silos: the snares stifling your growth
When an organization doesn’t have a unifying vision and interdepartmental communication, each division pursues its own priorities.
Sales decides they’re going to embrace a new leads model, while marketing pilots a new funnel strategy – and neither team lets the other know.
When examined at the department level, each initiative appears promising. Each department took the initiative to solve a problem and grow the organization.
The problem? Neither team took the other into account. Now there are two different initiatives which aren’t aligned, leading to inefficiencies, frustrations, interdepartmental hostility, and sclerosis.
These challenges are more common than you think: 80% of companies report at least a moderate level of siloed data, while 69% are unable to present a unified customer view.
Competitive silos, B2B friction, a case study
Appleaday, a rapidly growing medical manufacturer, has been closing some big accounts lately. But as their sales have expanded, unexpected problems started to arise.
Erika, Director of Sales, purchased a new CRM for the sales team to help manage customer accounts more efficiently. While this has enabled her direct reports to close deals faster and reduce customer churn, it has caused a major headache for the IT director, Brian, who wasn’t consulted.
Frustrations mount
Potential and current clients keep asking sales for real-time stock information, which their CRM cannot provide. IT is trying to create a custom workaround, but it’s not reliable, and it’s causing frustration between Erika and Brian.
Meanwhile, Carlotta, Senior Marketing Manager, is piloting a new platform to track the customer journey through Appleaday’s website, but the metrics she sees are not being sent to the CRM and vice versa. Carlotta decides to optimize the website based on fragmented metrics, leading to an imperfect solution.
Caught between factions
Brian and his IT department are caught in between each of these factions, along with the logistics department, whose stock metrics are tracked independently of the sales team, leading to continually delayed and incorrect orders. While Brian works hard to come up with band-aid solutions and custom workarounds, he wishes he could provide a simple, unified approach that would empower each team to grow together instead of apart.
Unified growth: collaboration, not competition
Achieving unified growth requires ditching the siloed mindset – where each department focuses only on their goals.
Instead, each department, from sales to marketing to product to IT, needs to focus on the same overarching goals and work from the same playbook.
Think of it like a planned city instead of urban sprawl. When a city grows without a plan, you wind up with the inefficient traffic-choked roads of Los Angeles as opposed to the efficient urban design of Tokyo.
Knocking down silos through technology
One of the most effective ways to break down barriers between departments is by unifying the platforms and data each department uses.
Look at our example, Appleaday: Each of their departments used a different tool whose data wasn’t relayed to the other solutions. As a result, sales couldn’t provide accurate stock to customers, marketing couldn’t create a unified customer journey, and logistics was constantly beset by order delays.
Centralizing this data
The key to knocking down these silos is unifying all critical business logic components, underpinned by the ERP as a single source of truth. By extending your ERP throughout each department, you guarantee that all teams are working with the same data – meaning far fewer errors, frustrations, and challenges.
Collaborative growth: working from the same playbook
Back at Appleaday, IT Manager Brian completes implementation of ERP-integrated eCommerce. This solution directly pulls data from the ERP with real-time accuracy, enabling customers to see exactly what’s on hand with up-to-the-second accurate pricing.
This new eCommerce solution easily integrates out-of-the-box with the sales CRM and marketing tools, enabling sales reps to provide on-demand answers to potential clients, and giving marketing a 360 degree view of the customer journey.
With each team working from the same playbook, they spend far less time trying to fix problems and compete against one another. Instead, they focus primarily on working collaboratively to achieve sustained growth.
At its heart, collaborative growth is all about connection. A key step to achieve connection is embracing a unified tech ecosystem.
But that’s just one step. Connection must be fostered throughout an organization consistently in order to achieve sustained growth.
That’s why we’re coming together for Sana Connect 2025: a live-online forum to unite buyers and sellers where real growth starts. We’ll focus on practical moves you can take the very next day to break down silos and drive digital revenue.
