In today’s world, integrating business systems to achieve maximum business benefit is of paramount importance and is the new way of doing things. Gone are the days when you could buy a product or a suite from one vendor and live with it for 5 to 10 years.
These days it's all about buying the best in the breed and then integrating it with the rest to make it work and extract the most of what the “best-of-breed” can deliver to achieve real business growth. However, that said, given the concentration of a few big players in the business system space and the speed of acquisitions & mergers, most “best-in-class” systems are available under a single vendor’s umbrella now. This though doesn’t take away the need to integrate because these systems would have evolved organically and need integration with other systems to deliver the desired outcomes.
It was predicted by Gartner way back in 2005 that integration will begin to play a critical role in the success of business systems and they were right.
Fact: “Through 2020, integration work will account for 50% of the time and cost of building
a digital platform.” – Gartner
In the past integration was the last thing business system staff wanted to do, because of the lack of tools and the concern of over-complicating the existing infrastructure, however with the emergence of specialist integration providers like MuleSoft, Apigee, Zapier etc, today integration is more feasible and makes it possible for businesses to get it done with relative ease (easier said than done, I know).
With that in mind, now let’s look at how to go about preparing for an integration project.
First, there are a few questions to answer:
- Does your organisation have a defined technology roadmap and business systems strategy for the foreseeable future?
- Do you have an integration architect/someone who knows much about the roadmap?
- What are the key business drivers that are pushing for the integration?
- What capabilities should the integrated solution provide? i.e. better decision models, better insights, improved business operations etc.
Once you have the above answered, it’s time to identify/decide on the form of integration that needs to be designed. i.e. whether it is going to focus on one particular area or is it going to be a hybrid of the below.
- Data Integration - Quality focus, Analytical focus or master data focus
- User Integration - User interface, device specific or user operation focused
- Process Integration – Application 2 Application, Business 2 Business, Customer specific or internal to the business
Identifying the above will help set a base to follow a methodological approach for systematic integration. Read more about this in the links available below.
Then the final and the most important step, is, of course, getting the job done, i.e. the actual setup & operation of the integrated solution with a project team and making it happen.
Remember, the success of an integrated solution is when it goes unnoticed to the users.
Here are some useful links on the Integration process:
