Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process

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Organizations undergoing growth, either organically or through M&A, tend to develop integration capabilities in a piecemeal and short-sighted fashion to preserve their view of agility.
Integration strategies that are focused solely on technological solutions are likely to complicate rather than simplify, as not enough consideration is given to how other systems and processes will be impacted.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Define a path for your EI strategy. Establish the more pressing goal of enterprise integration: improving operational integrity or adding business intelligence/predictive analytics capability.
Combine multiple views of integration for a comprehensive EI strategy. Assess business process, applications, and data in tandem to understand where enterprise integration will fit in your organization.
Don’t start by boiling the ocean and get bogged down in mapping out the entire organization. For the purposes of the strategy, narrow your focus to a set of related high-value processes to identify ways to improve integration.

Impact and Result

Begin your enterprise strategy formation by identifying if your organization places emphasis on enabling operational excellence or predictive modeling/analytics.
Enterprise integration needs to bring together business process, applications, and data, in that order. Kick-start the process of identifying opportunities for improvement by creating business process maps that incorporate how applications and data are coordinated to support business activities.
Revisit the corporate drivers after integration mapping activities to identify the primary use cases for improvement.
Prepare for the next steps of carrying out the strategy by reviewing a variety of solution options.
Develop a compelling business case by consolidating the outputs of your mapping activities, establishing metrics for a specific process (or set of processes), and quantifying the benefits.

Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should create an enterprise integration strategy; review Info-Tech’s methodology that encompasses business process, applications, and data; and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Executive Brief

1. Position enterprise integration within the organization

Begin strategy development by assigning roles and responsibilities for the team and establishing the initial direction for the strategy.

2. Explore the lenses of enterprise integration

Create business process maps that incorporate how applications and data are coordinated to support business activities.

3. Develop the enterprise integration strategy

Review your integration map to identify improvement opportunities, explore integration solutions, and consolidate activity outputs into a strategy presentation.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Position enterprise integration within your organization

Call 1: Discuss past experiences with implementing enterprise integration and the value of creating a strategy
Call 2: Identify which stakeholders should be involved and discuss the recommended focuses for enterprise integration

Guided Implementation 2: Explore the lenses of enterprise integration

Call 1: Discuss Info-Tech’s approach to integration mapping
Call 2: Discuss the current state of application integration and things to consider when improving it
Call 3: Discuss the importance of identifying the data and information assets that are enabling business activities

Guided Implementation 3: Develop the enterprise integration strategy

Call 1: Review your integration summary and discuss the observations, challenges, and opportunities for improvement
Call 2: Discuss solution options, depending on which aspect of integration you want to improve
Call 3: Consolidate all the activity outputs into a cohesive business case for the strategy

Authors

Crystal Singh

Steven Wilson

Kolade Odetoyinbo

Contributors

Albert Hui, Principal, Data Economist
Hariharan Ganesarethinam, Director, Enterprise Architecture and Integration
Joseph Markus, Canada Chief Solution Architect, Avanade Canada Inc.
Shahrokh Mohseni, Head of Enterprise Architecture and Integration, Mobile Broadband Network Limited

Search Code: 80184
Last Revised: August 18, 2016

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