Should you Build or Outsource your B2B Integration
Do it Yourself or Leverage Managed Services
Once you’ve decided to implement B2B integration, you are then faced with many options. One of the first decisions you must make is whether to build or outsource. There is a myriad of solutions on the market from software to hardware to cloud-based solutions, many of which can be implemented by your IT team or handled by the vendor’s managed services. How do you decide what’s best for you?
Your evaluation should be based on budget, internal IT resources, time to market and value required, and the complexity of your integration needs. If outsourcing is a better option for you, and increasingly it is for many companies, a cloud-based solution provides strong technical and business value to solve many of today’s integration challenges.
Top 5 Decision Criteria for Build versus Outsource
Here are five key areas for you to evaluate when trying to decide if you should build or outsource your B2B integration solution:
1. Core Competence: Does your internal IT team have the skills and expertise to build, implement and manage B2B integration? Chances are you have staff who are highly knowledgable about applications, database administration and network security, but not necessarily integration. Evaluate the costs around training and ongoing management by your internal team.
2. Time to Market: How quickly do you need to implement the integration processes? And how many customers, partners, or suppliers need to be integrated within that timeframe. If you have over six months and only a few companies to integrate, you may be able to manage it in-house. However, if the business requires fast integration due to market demands, and you have dozens or hundreds of companies to integrate, having a integration services firm handle the on-boarding, implementation, mapping and other areas may be the best solution.
3. Business Impact: Is there revenue at stake with this integration. For example, if you need to integrate a set of customers, and if you don’t do it well or fast enough, your company could lose those customers or future revenue? If you don’t integrate a set of suppliers the right way, could a product be delayed? Make sure your IT team is fully aligned with the business requirements and understand the full impact to the business.
4. Security and Compliance: Evaluate your current security and compliance requirements and whether or not they can be maintained if you outsource. What data would be involved in the integration process and does protection of this data impact your compliance to key regulations? Can the vendor provide the right level of data protection and encryption you need? By doing the integration yourself, you will be able to fully control the security parameters; however, many vendors provide best-in-class security that you could leverage cost-effectively.
5. Budget Implications: Do you have a clear budget for integration? Also, is the line of business willing to share the cost of integration with you?If your capital expenditure budget is already completely allocated, outsourcing the integration to a qualified cloud vendor that enables you to leverage an operational expenditure may be your only choice. Outsourcing may also give you the option of only paying for what you need, and starting small and then growing your integration community over time, rather than paying for everything upfront.