September 7, 2007, Newsletter Issue #80: A Brief Introduction to Systems Integration

Tip of the Week

Have you been hearing the “systems integration” buzzword over and over throughout the industry but do not really understand what it means?

Briefly, systems integration from an organizational perspective means that the different component systems of your business are capable of communicating with each other and sharing data, so that your entire intranet can seem like one giant system. That is, if one employee enters customer data into the system somewhere, other systems and other employees would automatically have access to the data, so that if some other employee has to interact with the same customer or company they will be able to easily discover what other interactions your organizations have had in the past.

Although business systems integration has been done many times before and by many different types of organizations, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and certainly no automatic way to get all of your systems, processes, and client applications working harmoniously together. The process cannot be done in a very short period of time, especially if there is a complicated remote systems integration problem involving suppliers and client systems, and probably requires outside consulting help by experts to complete, but don't let that discourage you. Once accomplished will radically improve the performance and adaptability of your organizations IT infrastructure over time, and is well worth the investment.

So stop listening to the buzzwords, find some experts, and start integrating today!

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