What is System Integration & How do you do it Successfully?

As companies grow, their software needs grow with them. Although at the start it is more cost-effective to buy the off-the-shelf software products you need at the time, as your business evolves, you find you are buying more and more software solutions. For example, you might select one common application for your accounting and then later another software for your inventory. Time passes and you want an application to manage your sales and marketing followed by a nifty customer service ticketing system. The good news is that your business is growing. The bad news is that your business has outgrown your software.

Because each individual software solution functions separately, your employees find themselves jumping from one product to the next often wasting valuable time entering the same, or related, data into different systems. What was cheaper at the start of your business now costs you both the time your employees spend fighting with your software and the money you spend maintaining so many systems. You should consider how a custom systems integration project can build exactly what your company needs to grow and thrive while reducing operational costs.

What is systems integration?

Systems integration links together different systems and applications to act as one coordinated system. Enterprise application integration involves combining data from various applications into a cohesive central hub for your users. It is a complicated process that requires a sophisticated understanding of your industry and deep knowledge in various technologies. A system integration enables enterprise resource planning, which will help you lead your company and provide more effective data for your decision making.

Why integrate?

Your existing systems have become a maze of inefficient processes and employee-designed workarounds. If your employees have to enter the same information into different systems, you are wasting valuable resources that could be used to better help your customers. By building an interface that integrates the system components your company already uses, you can complete a digital transformation that automates business processes, improves information flow, and optimizes the use of your data.
Read more about how we helped our client integrate two of their key tools to streamline operations and enhance client value.

5 BENEFITS OF SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

For your business, you want fluid operations connected by integrated workflows allowing you to make highly informed decisions quickly and confidently to service your customers. Let’s take a closer look at the five benefits of a custom system integration.

1. Better Data-Driven Decisions

When you use a common data format and have all your data in one centralized location, you can spend your hours analyzing it and making high-level decisions instead of using most of your resources to collect and synthesize the data into a usable form. As part of an in-depth systems project, you can create one common user interface layer, such as a dashboard, with the insights, statistics, and customer data that you require to make comparisons and identify trends.

2. Ease and Efficiency for Employees

Instead of working in multiple systems and entering duplicate data, your employees will be able to work from one unified system with a common data format while accessing multiple tools. A solid integration system method allows your team to spend resources on high-value tasks instead of simple ones like data extraction. The chance for human error in exporting, importing, and replicating data is drastically reduced through integration, providing you with more accurate information to run your business.

3. Improved System Security

Securing multiple systems or relying on software solutions providers to secure their systems adequately for your needs introduces additional risk to your business. Using a solution like point to point integration may also create security risks when patch updates occur and systems become incompatible. Part of your system integration should involve analyzing and addressing security for your business. Integrated systems can have the security tools needed to control user access, keeping your customer information and company data safe and secure.

4. Real-Time Data

If your data is kept in various systems and requires resources to collate, your data review will never be as quick as you may need. If you have large amounts of data or a large number of sub systems, your problem will be a large one. With systems integration, you can take advantage of a data transformation service to transfer your data from third-party applications to your central system in real-time. After the enterprise integration is completed, your team will be more informed on all aspects of your company and will utilize the needed data to make faster and smarter decisions.

5. Accelerated Company Growth

As work spent on low-value tasks decreases and access to high-quality data increases, your team will be able to focus on high-value growth efforts. Your employees and your customers together will benefit from ease of use the system integrator brings, and your leadership can concentrate on generating revenue and crafting new services for your customers.

5 Steps to Systems Integration

There are several crucial steps to a successful system integration that you will need to complete to build your new custom solution. You will want to follow this approach no matter what integration scenarios you are tackling.

1. Analysis

During the systems analysis step at the start of the process, your team will answer a series of questions like:

• What software solutions does your enterprise use?
• How do you use it?
• What functionality is missing?
• What is unneeded?
• What processes are painful?
• What frustrates and challenges your users?
• What delights your users?

Creating a custom system integration solution for your company requires understanding your unique, complex business logic, what gaps currently exist in your system, and how you can resolve those gaps. This includes an examination of all the third-party applications you currently use.
Why choose an expert for this analysis?
After all, you know what you need, right? While you are an expert in your business, your software systems integration partner will be an expert in computer systems. Using knowledge gained from working on hundreds of projects, your custom software integration company can suggest which applications can be easily replaced by newly written code and which should be replaced by different systems. Their goal is the same as yours—a smoothly integrated system. Together, you will design one strong system integration that will provide an immediate return on investment.

2. Architecture

Before starting, an architect will select a system integration method and create a detailed model articulating how all the components and sub systems will be connected as a unified system. This visual representation of the entire system provides the integration blueprint for the coding and articulates efficient data connectivity between all the solutions. This integration data model demonstrates the flow of data needed to design how the different users of all the sub systems will integrate with the new system.

Why do you need an experienced architect?
The old construction saying “measure twice, cut once” holds true for application design, especially for system integration projects. You will save resources and money by crafting one careful plan and by having an experienced architect who can see the big picture and slice the correct parts to the appropriate individuals to build. Your architect will understand the complex methods of your different subsystems and the correct integration method you need.

3. Design

The user experience design for your systems integration will include looking at how users interact with the current systems, speaking with selected users and stakeholders, and examining user feedback and wish lists while coordinating with the architect’s model. The new integrated system should feel comfortable and familiar enough for it to be easily adopted, yet new enough that users find it new and exciting.

Does design really matter?
Today’s user is a very sophisticated one who utilizes a wide variety of software every day—on phones, tablets, kiosks, and computers. What applications look like and how they act are important. A leading reason for leaving a job to move to another company is tied to systems frustration. A system integration project conducted with an excellent user experience will save on HR costs and improve company culture.

4. Implementation

As the individual components are integrated with the new system and its subsystems, significant testing will take place. Operational testing to ensure each component integrates with the system and end user testing to ensure the new workflow is smooth and easy to use will occur. This integration process requires close attention to the individual details and a strong understanding of the entire system.

Can’t we just push a launch button and go?
You could, but it shouldn’t be recommended. You will want an agile approach that completes the stages of integration in a manageable way on a schedule incorporating feedback as you go instead of in one big bang at the end. Designing, building, and testing iteratively throughout the system integration implementation processes will serve you well.

5. Evolution

As your company continues to grow and change, your software will also evolve. You may choose to add features, offer new services, or to connect additional solutions to your architecture. You might want to replace systems with expensive fees with custom software you build to decrease those lifetime costs. If you decide to start small and connect just two systems and then evolve until you have your own custom integrated system.

Will I really need to evolve?
You will. How much evolution depends on the type of company you run and the changes it experiences. Having a systems integration partner who understands the evolution of both your industry and technology will ensure you are prepared for growth related to your customers and your services from the beginning of your project.

5 REASONS WHY SYSTEMS INTEGRATIONS FAIL.

Systems integration projects are not easy, and as many as 70% fail to achieve their goals. Before you start your project, consider some of the main reasons why these projects could run over budget and over time.

1. Lack of Business Involvement

Do not be tempted to think that because all of the systems exist and your development team understands their functions that software systems integration is an IT project. Without input from the sales and customer service teams, the needs of your users will be missed. An integration is not a simple reshuffling of the building blocks of your ecosystem; in fact, the new system will both look and act differently than what your team works with now. It is crucial that stakeholders who know the business process collaborate with those who work with the application to contribute to the integration consistently throughout the project.

2. Lack of Integration Expertise

Many excellent developers will attempt a system integration project only to realize midway through that they are out of their depth. Integration requires a specialized skill set with a deep understanding of common data, subsystems and interface layers, experience with technologies, and strong business knowledge. You will not want to keep a specialist on your team full time, but you should hire an expert who can architect and help lead the project. If you have an in-house development team, you may want to have one of your developers work with the integration partner to ensure they can maintain the newly organized system. If you do not have a team on the payroll, ask your partner about support and maintenance options at the onset of the project.

3. Lack of a Long-term Integration Strategy

Running a company is complex and so is the technology that you require to support your business. Your overall software strategy needs to be part of your ongoing planning process and should include your systems strategy. As your company grows, pivots, changes in strategy, you will update your technology integration strategy to accommodate your needs. Make a point of establishing clear accountability with inputs from your various stakeholders to ensure that everyone with a vested interest in your company’s success contributes to your software strategy planning.

4. Legacy Systems Issues

If some of the applications you have in place are old or out of date, challenges related to updating and integrating the legacy systems into a more modern system will occur. They may lack the interfacing capabilities that are currently considered standard in solutions and will require some adaptation. Integration may be the right opportunity to move your entire system to a cloud-based solution phasing out the on-premises servers or you may want to consider a hybrid cloud solution with a system integration layer that connects the legacy system with development of the new system. Either way, you will want to make an intentional and well thought-out architectural choice that best serves your needs.

5. New Integration Tools

New technologies designed to make life simpler are created regularly. They come with slick advertising pages and lofty promises. However, a system integration solution needs more than just the newest integration tool to create connectivity. You want integration solutions that will work within your entire ecosystem and will scale with your business. The talented makers of that latest integrations tool have not looked under the hood of your systems, so they cannot determine exactly how far that technology will take you. The better choice is to ask your systems integration company about these tools and what should be included as part of your updated system.

5 TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

Here are some best practices that can ensure your system integration project is successful.

1. Simplify

Build what you need when you need it. Do not be tempted to tackle an enormous system integration development project. Instead, start small by identifying items connected to immediate business process benefits and build those first. Focusing on a small integration and receiving feedback from users allows you to build sustainably and economically.

2. Automate

The more you can automate tasks in your system integration the better. You will free up your team members and reduce the likelihood of errors. Take every opportunity during the integration process to boost the productivity of your team and your software.

3. Secure

All technology project plans, including system integration ones, should address security concerns. Data may require encryption as it moves between applications or a specific security process may be needed if employees will be accessing the integrated system on personal cloud-based devices.

4. Test

Integrations test plans should be created early and used often. Whether you are using automated test scripts or manual testing, you will want to be certain you have a continual well-documented feedback loop in your development iterations.

5. Monitor

Build in logging and monitoring to allow you to know when something fails. Since systems integration connects the applications that are entirely yours with those run outside your control, you want easy management methods to always know if and when something goes down or needs service in your ecosystem.

4 Ways to Eliminate System Integration Issues & Complexities

1: Consolidate Disparate Applications

You don’t have to rely on disparate, outdated systems anymore. By consolidating your applications into one seamless system, you can improve communication, allow for automation, increase visibility, and more.

2: Connect Your Most-Used Applications

We know you have applications that you already use and love. With systems integration, you don’t have to lose the functionality your employees rely on. You can connect to your most-used applications to ensure your employees never skip a beat.

3: Automate Common Business Processes

Replace manual processes with automation to save your business time and money. With automation, you can reduce human errors, optimize your workflows, and lower your operating costs.

4: Free Up Valuable Resources for Other Projects

By automating and consolidating business processes, you can free your employee’s time, so they can focus on bigger picture goals and spend more time with your customers.

TYPES OF SYSTEM INTEGRATION

In the broadest of technical terms, integration is the process of connecting your subsystems into a cohesive system that serves your business processes. This requires an understanding of several methods of subsystems integration. Each of the integrations offers rewards and challenges, so deciding what is right for you is a complex endeavor. Crafting a solution that centers around the way you use data will be the end goal.

If you want to learn more about how to start your systems integration project, contact Geneca for a free consultation today.

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