Enterprise Integration Realized
Every firm has a BOSS, that is, a Business Operations Support System (BOSS). This is composed of the manual and automated processes the firm executes every day during the course of business. Enterprise Integration is a method of sharing key business data in a way that enables a business to meet its goals for profitability, growth, cost reduction, etcetera. Business Process Management (BPM) and a standards based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are tools that The Pros From Dover use most often to make a BOSS that transforms the way an enterprise does business.
Business processes of an organization need to be evaluated before implementing an enterprise integration effort. This is where a firm needs to understand the Financial, Managerial, Technical and Operational aspects of the effort to realize the desired enterprise integration result. TPFDI has the expertise to assist a firm’s leadership in understanding the requirements of each business function in working together to create an enterprise integration effort that will assist the company to increase profitability and to reach new markets. The Synthesis of business functions in the Enterprise Integration achieves the business benefits every firm is seeking.
Financial
Not only must enterprise integration efforts be budgeted and managed, but also sensitive financial data must be available only to authorized users within and outside of the enterprise. Additional financial considerations arise when the enterprise integrates its business processes with vendors, partners and customers. For example, when a firm acquires a smaller company, the firm also acquires the smaller company’s financial management system and must integrate that system with its own.
Technical
Enterprise integration and SOA BPM allow the firm to use technology to make business processes easier and more repeatable. Business Process Modeling determines how the hardware and software used in the BOSS are implemented. This requires a different level of interaction between IT and the rest of the organization than usually occurs when IT implements specific applications on a department by department basis. For example, the firm has a need to provide a simple user interface for field personnel to enter data that can be added to a site database and an Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) system.
Managerial
In order to realize the full benefits of enterprise integration, management’s involvement is also different from when IT departments implemented specific applications on a department by department basis. Management now needs to take a systematic view of the firm’s business processes. Traditionally, departmental data has been kept in different information silos, which is not shared with other departments. As a result, typically, manual processes were developed to share data. Using the right business process model, IT can implement an enterprise integration which allows management to view data from multiple departments in one easy to use report.
Operational
Day to day operations requires some new thinking on the part of the organization. In addition to planning the technical implementation, including how many computers and data centers are required to handle a firm’s applications, there are cross departmental training requirements when the company desires to share information between departments. The information Service Level Agreement (SLA) may vary between departments and the executive team. IT Operations must plan the rollout of selected Enterprise Integration elements differently, than before the Enterprise Integration. The rollout is different due to training that must be conducted outside of the IT department, especially for CEOs and CFOs on dashboards.
Synthesis - Enterprise Integration Realized
By putting all the views of your enterprise together, new relationships and processes you may not even been aware of emerge. It is these new relationships and processes that is the payoff. Almost always, the result is bigger than the sum of the parts. Economies of scale become possible, agility and performance are increased, and barriers between business and IT teams are markedly reduced. What wasn't possible before for organizational silos is now possible across the enterprise.
This is the payoff.
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last updated 2010/02/06