In our last article in our series on successful Enterprise Transformations we want to discuss Systems Integration.
Odds are good that you have information flows and enterprise applications other than your ERP system that manage different areas of your business. Maybe you have a payroll package that handles payroll – which means your employee data needs to integrate back to your ERP. Perhaps you have estimating software - and since each estimate will tie into your ERP system, you need to integrate that as well.
Welcome to the art of systems integration.
Here are some systems integration best practices:
Get companywide buy-in
Since ERP integration covers many business functions from accounting to sales to HR, you need to make sure you have companywide buy-in and the support of management to do the implementation. In some cases, there may be issues that the project manager or developer does not fully comprehend. By having additional people from your organization involved, they can help ensure vital processes work properly.
Start with clearly defined goals and objectives
What type of integration will you need? Will you purchase an integration server or will you implement a point-to-point solution where most of the integration is done by hand? The answer may lie in your clearly defined goals and objectives.
By clearly defining your goals and objectives up front, you can get a good idea as to how often the data needs to be integrated as well as what tools need to be developed or purchased to handle the job.
Implement system integration in phases
It’s important to implement system integration in phases. This will allow you to ensure existing systems continue to function properly while you integrate processes for your new ERP software. By choosing smaller business processes in the early phases and providing thorough testing, you can make sure that the data is flowing properly.
Integrate one new system at a time
Some companies try to implement multiple new systems at once. This can make integration substantially more difficult and should be avoided. By using test databases with existing systems, you can test your system integration processes without harming production data.
Systems integration can be a tricky topic. If done incorrectly, it can lead to data that is out of sync - or worse yet, it can threaten the integrity of your data. You may want to consider outsourcing this important step in implementing your new ERP system. By outsourcing systems integration, you can have someone with experience integrating ERP, CRM, and other systems into one smooth running system. Whether you do systems integration in-house or have it outsourced, don’t forget to include thorough testing in your project plan or you may end up with some big surprises on go-live day.