The Single Source of Truth

According to Information Week, a single source of truth can be defined as “one source [of data] that everyone in a company agrees is the real, trusted number for some operating data”. Don’t worry if you had to read that twice — I did too. In layman’s terms, the idea of a single source of truth is that all of the information required to run a company is stored and made available in one platform, and that platform should then be used as the ultimate source of information on anything and everything to do with your business and maintained/updated on a regular and consistent basis.

Imagine if you could empower everyone in your organization with instant access to the data they need, when they need it. When you create an official source to contain this data, that’s the single source of truth.

Data systems are becoming increasingly fragmented and this is what has led to the definitive need for one singular platform to hold all peterinent company data from each branch of the business. Up until recently, we’ve been creating data silos to make processing easier, but it’s actually just becoming even more complicated and difficult to find that real data you need when you need it. Think about it; you have your customer service and sales teams operating on their CMS, only in different areas where communication never overlaps, and then your marketing team running off a whole other system focused on project management. How can a company work cohesively when there is no one single source of information to rely upon?

This is actually something we see happen with new Buckets users who aren’t quite familiar with the tools and services available to them on our platform. These users are more familiar with using multiple solutions to accommodate their needs, so rather than setting up a “mothership” process to manage all of their incoming tasks from various Projects, they often recreate the same information silos unnecessarily. Tasks and reference notes are duplicated and managed in multiple locations, effectively slowing down the workflow for everyone involved and possibly tainting their data with multiple sources of truth.

For example, what happens if you have multiple Checklists of the same thing? It starts to get confusing pretty fast, that’s what. If one team member is working off one Checklist and another is working off a duplicate version of the same Checklist in a different place, neither one knows what the other is doing — nor can they see any changes that are made. Additional issues occur when not enough clarity is added to each Project or task, or it’s simply not available to that team member, leading to a block in the workflow until they can contact and get a response from the appropriate source.

What is needed, is a company-wide repository to act as the single source of truth within your organization where every ounce of data is stored only once. Using a collaborative task management platform allows you to organize your process and create any extra documentation required as you work through the process. This documentation is then available to others and can be edited and reorganized quickly once the process has been optimized for proper efficiencies.

Buckets is designed to act not only as a task management system, but also incorporates the ability to store and retain information in tandem to the tasks. There are many different ways you can accomplish both separately or together depending on your style of use. Once your team members have been added to a Project, everyone will be aware of any documentation changes that occur within that Project and have access to edit, add, or delete content as required.

Projects include a Filter that provides a way to reduce the visual clutter within a busy Project, allowing users to get an instant visual of the specific Cards they need. Content is filtered using keywords, usernames, and Labels, which makes it even more important to properly assign Labels to prioritize or group content in your Project from the outset.

Buckets adapts to not only handle your organizational needs for task management but provides an extremely powerful and seamless SSOT. Rather than relying on multiple applications to manage your content, Buckets provides a true single source of truth for all of your documentation.

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