Organizations treat integration as an afterthought, resulting in a fragile patchwork of systems:

• Integrations are often done piecemeal (point to point), leading to a spaghetti network of connections with high maintenance overhead.
• Data remains siloed in each application, causing duplicate efforts, inconsistent reports, and no single source of truth.
• Without a unifying integration strategy, technology investments underdeliver on their promise.

Even when integration is recognized as important, hurdles persist when turning vision into reality:

• Departments focus on only their own systems, and no one owns enterprise integration.
• Years of one-off links result in brittle dependencies. The fear of breaking things stifles attempts to modernize integration.
• Teams default to familiar methods (e.g. manual exports) due to lack of integration expertise or platforms. Security and data quality issues are left to be fixed “later.”

Use Info-Tech’s method to transform integration from a reactive afterthought to a proactive, value-driven practice:

• Identify where integrations will deliver business value before choosing how to implement them. This ensures that each connection has a purpose.
• Become aware and select the best integration approach for the enterprise using Info-Tech’s framework.
• Establish guiding principles and testing requirements for integrations from the get-go, so they are reliable and withstand change.

Goals

Systems

Constraints

Security

Timeliness

Volume

Choose a style.

Design the message flow.

Manage the system.

Best-fit integration approach

Hybrid integration approach

1. Identify why each integration is needed.
2. Define integration patterns.
3. Define your integration testing strategy.

1. Confirm when integration is the best approach for your processes and workflows.
   • Identify applications and technical use cases to be considered for integration.
   • Develop guiding principles to prioritize the patterns for each proposed integration.
2. Evaluate various integration patterns and approaches.
   • Understand the best practices and tactics for different integration patterns.
   • Select an integration path from various approaches.
3. Finalize the integration strategy.
   • Define high-level integration testing requirements to ensure that various parts of applications interact correctly and data flows seamlessly
     between them.
   • Define high-level regression/performance testing requirements to
     ensure stability.

Call 1: Identify technical use cases for integration.

Call 2: Develop guiding principles.

Calls 3 to 6: Define and select integration pattern(s).

Call 7: Define high-level integration testing requirements.

Call 8: Define high-level regression/performance
testing requirements.

• Simplified architecture and lower maintenance: By replacing ad hoc point-to-point links with a planned integration framework, IT reduces complexity. Fewer custom scripts and one-off fixes mean less time firefighting and more time on value-add development.
• Increased reuse and faster delivery: With standard APIs and integration services in place, IT can reuse components for multiple projects. For example, once you have a customer information API, any new application that needs customer data will be able to
  plug in.
• Improved data quality and security: A cohesive integration strategy improves overall data integrity. Data is validated and transformed consistently as it flows, reducing discrepancies between systems. It is easier to meet compliance requirements (e.g. GDPR, HIPAA) when integrations are managed systematically.

• Faster process cycle times: Integrated processes are inherently quicker. This responsiveness can directly improve revenue (faster quote-to-cash means faster payments) and customer satisfaction (quick service delivery).
• Enhanced customer experience: Customers increasingly expect a seamless journey, and integration makes this possible. A connected experience drives higher customer loyalty and a better net promoter score (NPS).
• Operational agility and innovation: Once integration is in place, a business can launch new initiatives faster. In essence, an integrated enterprise is agile – it can reconfigure processes, scale up, or plug in new capabilities with far less friction. This agility is a competitive advantage in dynamic markets, enabling innovation and expansion (e.g. entering new channels, acquisitions integration, AI adoption) with the confidence that the tech backbone can support it.

Criteria

Info-Tech Services

Other Services

In-House DIY

Time to Value

Info-Tech’s methodology gets you to an actionable integration strategy in as little as six to eight weeks by leveraging our established frameworks and templates.

A traditional consulting project might take four to six months to produce similar deliverables, often consuming valuable time in extended discovery and analysis.

A do-it-yourself approach without guidance can stretch even longer. Some organizations spend a year debating integration approaches without formalizing a plan.

Direct Cost

For Info-Tech members, developing this strategy is built into your membership (no large extra fees). You gain expert guidance and tools without a six-figure consulting invoice.

In contrast, hiring an external firm for an integration strategy engagement can easily cost US$100,000 to US$250,000.

The DIY route is not free either. It silently costs your staff’s time, pulling your staff away from day-to-day projects for months, often with trial-and-error inefficiencies.

Quality and Best Practices

Our strategy deliverable is grounded in industry best practices and real-world integration success stories, not theory. We incorporate lessons learned from thousands of enterprises (e.g. common failure points to avoid, such as neglecting data governance).

Traditional consulting often delivers a static report for the current use cases. Info-Tech provides a living framework (models, templates, and training for your team), enabling you to execute and adapt the recommended strategy.

Going it alone, companies often miss critical elements (e.g. planning for error handling, aligning integration with data governance), resulting in costly rework later. With Info-Tech, you get a comprehensive, field-tested strategy the first time.

Metric

Baseline (Current)

Target (After Integration)

Monthly Integration Incident Tickets
(number of support tickets related to data sync errors or integration failures per month)

~30 tickets/month
(frequent integration issues)

<10 tickets/month
(sharp decrease, indicating more stable integrations)

First-Pass Integration Success Rate
(percent of integration deployments completed without critical rework or escalation)

~50%
(fixes or multiple attempts required for half of integrations )

>90%
(vast majority done correctly the first time, according to defined patterns)

Average Integration Delivery Time
(time to implement a new data interface or process integration)

~8 weeks per integration
(lengthy, ad hoc processes)

4 weeks or less
(well-planned, faster delivery)

Manual Data Handoffs in Key Processes
(number of times that data is manually transferred between systems in critical workflows)

5 manual handoffs per process
(e.g. staff exporting/importing files)

0 manual handoffs
(100% automated data flow through integrations)