- 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.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phases 1-3
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.
- Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phase 1: Position Enterprise Integration Within Your Organization
- Chief Enterprise Integration Officer
- Enterprise Integration Strategy Drivers Assessment
2. Explore the lenses of enterprise integration
Create business process maps that incorporate how applications and data are coordinated to support business activities.
- Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phase 2: Explore the Lenses of Enterprise Integration
- Enterprise Integration Process Mapping Tool
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.
- Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process – Phase 3: Develop the Enterprise Integration Strategy
- Enterprise Integration Strategy Presentation Template
Workshop: Build Effective Enterprise Integration on the Back of Business Process
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Position Enterprise Integration
The Purpose
Discuss the general approach for creating a holistic enterprise integration strategy.
Define the initial direction and drivers.
Key Benefits Achieved
Strategy development team with responsibilities identified.
Clear initial direction for the strategy based on senior stakeholder input.
Activities
1.1 Define the driving statements for your EI strategy.
1.2 Develop a RACI chart.
1.3 Discuss the current state of enterprise integration.
1.4 Establish the initial direction of your strategy by surveying senior stakeholders.
Outputs
Vision, mission, and values for enterprise integration
RACI chart for strategy development
Documentation of past integration projects
Chief Enterprise Integration Officer job description template
2 Explore the Lenses of Enterprise Integration
The Purpose
Build a comprehensive map of what integration looks like for your target business processes.
Key Benefits Achieved
Clear documentation of the integration environment, encompassing process, data, and applications.
Activities
2.1 Develop level-0 and level-1 business capability diagrams.
2.2 Identify the business processes of focus, based on relevance to overall corporate drivers.
2.3 Complete process flow diagrams.
2.4 Begin identifying the applications that are involved in each step of your process.
2.5 Detail the connections/interactions between the applications in your business processes.
2.6 Draw a current state diagram for application integration.
2.7 Identify the data elements created, used, and stored throughout the processes, as well as systems of record.
Outputs
Business capability maps
Business process flow diagrams
Current state integration diagram
Completed integration map
3 Develop the Enterprise Integration Strategy
The Purpose
Review the outputs of the integration mapping activities.
Educate strategy team on the potential integration solutions.
Consolidate the findings of the activities into a compelling strategy presentation.
Key Benefits Achieved
Integration improvement opportunities are identified.
Direction and drivers for enterprise integration are finalized.
Understanding of the benefits and limitations of some integration solutions.
Activities
3.1 Discuss the observations/challenges and opportunities for improvement.
3.2 Refine the focus of the strategy by conducting a more detailed stakeholder survey.
3.3 Review the most common integration solutions for process, applications, and data.
3.4 Create a future state integration architecture diagram.
3.5 Define the IT and business critical success factors for EI.
3.6 Articulate the risks with pursuing (and not pursuing) an EI strategy.
3.7 Quantify the monetary benefits of the EI strategy.
3.8 Discuss best practices for presenting the strategy and organize the presentation content.
Outputs
Critical success factors and risks for enterprise integration
Monetary benefits of enterprise integration
Completed enterprise integration strategy presentation