Breaking down the barriers to rapid integration

3 months to introduce a new data feed? I know our MD, Rick Barton, reckons that’s outrageously long, but I’ve worked in enterprises where 3 months was the fast track method, and somewhere from 9 to 18 months is the norm. But Rick is 100% correct in asserting that businesses should not accept even 3 months delay in meeting the business' need for integrating a new information source.

The question is how do today’s enterprises build in the capability to respond in days or weeks to such business requirements?

A mixture of people, process and technology is required, but process and technology must be tied into the business needs. IT architecture is fundamental, and needs to be flexible, extensible and scalable because many architectural features are very difficult to change once deployed. Choosing the right architecture is not a one size fits all decision, but there are some basic questions you need to ask the hardware and software vendors (more about those in a future blog). This needs to be combined with people who understand their position and value to the organisation alongside best practice processes, governance, standards and methods. Even then a way must be found to understand what is out there in the enterprise without a business analyst spending weeks or months researching data sources.

From a technology perspective, tools are now emerging to help complement the pillars of people, process and architecture. Tools like Composite Software’s Discovery. Such technologies give you ‘point and click’ ability to explore the enterprise and, most importantly, discover the relationships within the data – without writing a single line of code. The point and click capability is vital – the ability to auto discover relationships you probably didn’t know were there is the foundation stone for understanding the relevance and value of that data, so you can then feed it into your business information processes in order to better understand how to profit from it.

For more information visit www.emunioconsulting.com