System Integration / Enterprise Application Integration
Here's a story about ensuring your in-house systems are integrated and talk the same language so essential information can be accessed across your business bridging islands of automation with the corporate mainland.
What is systems integration?
Systems integration is about designing, building or adjusting your company IT or business process systems to ensure there's a cohesive approach to information across diverse components or equipment from multiple vendors.
Integration (from the Latin integer: whole or entire) generally means combining parts so that they work together or form a whole. In information technology that can mean bringing different manufacturers' products together into a single system.
Why do we need it?
During the 80s, the dawning of the age of business computer systems, technology grew in great leaps and bounds with little concern for how it was all going to work together.
Mainframes, minicomputers and eventually the PC had different operating systems, as did the networks that connected them. It seemed as soon as one generation of software or hardware was installed and running it was superseded by the next, resulting in older or legacy systems rapidly becoming redundant or incapable of running the next generation of applications. Managing all this complexity and keeping pace with change was an expensive nightmare and a full time job for the IT department.
As the 90s shifted the focus to connectivity, network operating systems became more complex but meant a greater range of hardware and software could co-operate on the same network. Now as we enter the age of interconnected enterprises internal systems are expected to interact across departments and branches as well as with the systems of partners in the supply chain.
That's where systems integration or the services offered by a systems integrator become invaluable. If in-house IT resources are already stretched, this is a function that can be outsourced to a consulting company with IT analysis and software customising skills, or an independent third party which can help determine the best way to re-engineer systems to deliver the best possible benefits for the organisation as it moves forward.
A systems integrator typically has considerable IT skills and represents multiple solutions often enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other approaches that get back office and front office technology humming along in harmony and ready to go the next step of working with partners in the supply chain.
Some of the major systems integrators in New Zealand are Synergy, IBM Global Services, HP-Compaq, Axon, and Olympic Software. (See below for more details on what each specialises in)
Who should consider systems integration?
If your organisation has grown in a piecemeal way with different departments responsible for their own IT development and are considering ways to improve efficiency and get into business-to-business electronic commerce then you need to think seriously about systems integration.
According to Meta group there is greater need for integrating back-office, cross application business process with front office, customer facing web centric applications and integration needs to be driven by data consistency and adjusting business process accordingly.
The answers to this dilemma are increasingly falling to systems integrators to ensure the right information gets to the right person at the right time. If financial systems are connected to CRM systems each department can get a much better view of how to sell to and service the customer.
For example the customer database system may recognises the number of the caller and route it to the appropriate sales representative who can give the status of outstanding orders and queries at the same time. Because he's also looking at the customer management system showing the value and quantity of previous purchases he can add value to the relationship by suggesting other products or services or even a discount as a reward for continued custom.. Acceptance of the order and automatic processing of the electronic documents through to despatch can be set in motion immediately. That transaction now becomes part of the customer record and can be re-used by the marketing department to understand future trends and develop new campaigns.
Systems integration ensures that organisations can begin to operate more holistically, with systems working together to build a corporate memory and much deeper relationships with customers and business partners. Getting the old and new systems working together opens the way for greater co-operation, speedier access to data and a much better grasp of resources.
Benefits
- Less concern with being locked in to a single vendor
- Less focus on IT and more on business goals
- Seamless flow of information between systems
- Reduce duplication of processes and documents
- Greater co-operation between departments
- More knowledge about the customer
- Ability to add greater value to each transaction
- Greater chance of understanding business and market trends
- Less focus on IT and more on business goals
What issues need consideration
Current Compatibility: Many businesses have over the years developed relationships with multiple vendors who have installed different and often incompatible brands of hardware and software and even networking systems to meet the needs of different departments.
Inter-Departmental Coopertion: To bridge the gaps and deliver seamless information across an organisation the organisation needs a business plan that has the buy-in of all departments. Spelling out the benefits at a personal level is always the best way to ensure support. It also requires the use of common protocols and standards to ensure consistancy.
Project Creep: Customer relationship management (CRM) vendor might try to convince you that the new systems he's offering will fit effortlessly into your existing systems by simply loading it onto your server. The reality is it will most likely require considerable planning and technical expertise to integrate it with existing systems so you get the value you need to make this investment pay off.
Installing a CRM system may in fact show up the need to further existing systems. According to an analyst firm Meta Group, the integration of enterprise applications and transactions/business processes that cut across those applications will be crucial for implementing successful customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives .
Cost: While organisations may focus on buying best of breed applications for their critical in-house requirements they're discovering these have complex and diverse features, which need to be customised and then integrated to work with other business applications. According to Meta Group this can account for up to one third of the cost of a systems implementation budget.
The use of Middleware: Many organisations are turning to specialised middle-ware software to manage the integration and flow of data and document files between systems, upon which specialised e-businss initiatives can be established.
Back to the iStart System / App. Integration Research Pavilion
