Six Questions to a Successful Integration Project
Posted by Steve Cahill on January 31, 2011
B2B Integration can be tough to manage. You dance your way through business processes, IT functionality, and your customer’s requirements. These are not challenges you need to deal with alone. At Hubspan, we combine our cloud platform with managed services, allowing you to outsource the on-boarding, connectivity, change management, mapping and other integration elements to a team of experts.
However, even with outsourcing, a company must be internally prepared and aligned to ensure a successful integration project. Over the course of thousands of integration projects, Hubspan has compiled six key questions you should answer in order to have a successful integration project, whether you handle it in-house or have it managed by a service provider:
1. Who is involved?
Make sure you know everyone who will be involved in this project. Nothing is worse than getting 75% complete, then encountering a show-stopping roadblock due to input from an unknown stakeholder.
There are generally 3-10 stakeholders involved on a daily basis. These can be your business stakeholders, your IT department, your customer, your customer’s marketplace or outsourced integration provider, and more. Make sure it’s clear who owns the integration process. And make sure the business and IT sides of the house are in alignment on the goals and roles of those involved.
2. What are you trying to do?
Now that you know who will be involved, everyone needs to have a clear indication of the value you’re trying to generate. For example, you might want to automate invoice processing for a large number of your customers, or one of your customers might be asking for a punchout-enabled catalog in order to streamline their purchasing process with you. You may need only to transmit small electronic messages (e.g. purchase orders) or you may need to exchange large files (e.g. CAD drawings). This project may be time-sensitive or have “best-effort” timing.
Each of these scenarios requires differing technical capabilities and resource commitments from portions of your stakeholders. Clearly defining the scope of the project is critical.
3. What security policies or business rules are required?
Customer integration is typically much more than just moving a document between two companies. Each business may have detailed business rules or workflows it needs to follow, such as tracking ID numbers or correlating information on all procurement messages. Security and compliance are also vital. What type of authentication does your company require? How do data encryption levels or compliance come into play?
4. Is everyone ready?
This may seem obvious, but make sure at this point that everyone involved with the project clearly understands what efforts are being asked of them and are aware of the schedule. Any delays in responses from key resources, even a slow answer to an email or phone call, could push out the “go live” date. The project owner needs to keep all internal resources on task and on schedule.
5. What if things don’t go as planned?
By now, you’ve defined your resources, told them what they’ll be working on, and understand their availability. As implementation work happens, things sometimes won’t go according to plan. Some of these problems are easy to overcome, but others will require some flexibility.
If you’ve leveraged an outsourced integration partner, they can be a big help – there’s a high probability that they’ve encountered a similar situation and either have a solution already, or can recommend how best to move forward. There have been many times in the middle of an integration project when we are faced with new customer needs or requirements. If you don’t have an outsourced integration partner, and you encounter a roadblock, your customer may be flexible. Be prepared to move around your priorities based on what you learn or experience.
6. What other business processes can I integrate?
Congratulations! You’ve completed your integration project. Now is the time to think about whether you have other business processes that would be a good fit for a similar project. If your company is saving money by sending electronic invoices, perhaps implementing punchout and electronic purchase order capabilities would save even more. Be creative here: integration partners usually provide functionality well beyond the original agreement, and you can sometimes get functionality added for a much lower cost than the initial investment.
Tags: B2B Integration, Business Process Outsourcing, customer integration, integration project, Service Provider
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