Modern business, regardless of how big and how big it is, is a complicated process. Even small businesses have hundreds of thousands of different marketing, business, and operational applications.
The applications must function seamlessly to help achieve the outcomes that are most important to the business. Business integration is a strategy to achieve this by connecting and enabling members of an ecosystem to work as a whole.
The most important factor in successful business integration is correct design from the beginning. All too often, integrations are developed in ways that make it difficult to change the design. The wrong design choices could lead to a system which is difficult to maintain and run, as well as being expensive.
Traditionally, most business integrations have focused on integrating IT and software systems, including ERP and CRM solutions. This type of integration, known as application integration, is typically carried out using APIs or other tools to allow connectivity between systems. These types of integrations are generally restricted in their scope and usually require a team of dedicated technical staff in the field to maintain and manage these integrations.
The key to success in modern business integration is an integrated approach that focuses on business service-level integration. This is accomplished by mapping the necessary business services to the proper technology. This also includes the creation of the essential components needed to facilitate integration, like connectors and data mappings. A rigorous testing and deployment process is also necessary in a controlled setting. A monitoring process and optimization is used to ensure that the integration meets the goals.
