Integrate-ability
There are so many really cool technologies out there. Technologies that when you see them demoed you are blown away by the promise they offer. Sometimes this awe leads companies and individuals astray when it comes to not only finding a technology but one that will actualize in an already established environment. What I'm talking about is the lack of focus organizations put on the way new technology integrates.
Poor integration is the killer of ROI when it comes to purchasing enterprise applications. We sometimes forget that when introducing new technology, it must play nice with existing technology, it also must be given the chance to reach it's demoed potential. It seems obvious but so often organizations skip planning steps, skip testing and result in buying expensive technology that conflicts with the existing environment or setup incorrectly.
This problem in large part is aggravated by the vendors. Most vendors are not too concerned with their technology's smooth integration, many even want it to be difficult to integrate as their business thrives on professional service income. Recently, I was a panelist for leading enterprise software vendors, the attendees were mostly marketing staff. It was clear they did not see the importance of integration. Often what it takes for vendors to provide better integration support is more documentation, more samples. This was my initial and easiest to execute recommendation. They see this as a cost generator, or they simply don't know who in their organization would own this responsibility. The unfortunate aspect of this belief is that they are only hurting themselves. Adoption of technology depends on a good experience beyond the sale. Companies have tightened their budget all around, and to win deals these technologies need to promote features and integration.
Because the vendors are a little lost it's up to the IT departments and knowledge works who will utilize the technology to plan properly the integration. Seeing demos is great, but that is just the point when organizations should slow down. Document the current environment. Establish how the new technology will fit within it. Know the applications success factors and the path to reach them, and finally TRIAL. If a vendor is afraid to give you a trial than this should be a red flag instantly. They are not established enough to have trials, or they are trying to lock you into a professional service ROI squashing machine.
Often technology is blamed incorrectly when what really should be blamed is poor integration and planning.
Poor integration is the killer of ROI when it comes to purchasing enterprise applications. We sometimes forget that when introducing new technology, it must play nice with existing technology, it also must be given the chance to reach it's demoed potential. It seems obvious but so often organizations skip planning steps, skip testing and result in buying expensive technology that conflicts with the existing environment or setup incorrectly.
This problem in large part is aggravated by the vendors. Most vendors are not too concerned with their technology's smooth integration, many even want it to be difficult to integrate as their business thrives on professional service income. Recently, I was a panelist for leading enterprise software vendors, the attendees were mostly marketing staff. It was clear they did not see the importance of integration. Often what it takes for vendors to provide better integration support is more documentation, more samples. This was my initial and easiest to execute recommendation. They see this as a cost generator, or they simply don't know who in their organization would own this responsibility. The unfortunate aspect of this belief is that they are only hurting themselves. Adoption of technology depends on a good experience beyond the sale. Companies have tightened their budget all around, and to win deals these technologies need to promote features and integration.
Because the vendors are a little lost it's up to the IT departments and knowledge works who will utilize the technology to plan properly the integration. Seeing demos is great, but that is just the point when organizations should slow down. Document the current environment. Establish how the new technology will fit within it. Know the applications success factors and the path to reach them, and finally TRIAL. If a vendor is afraid to give you a trial than this should be a red flag instantly. They are not established enough to have trials, or they are trying to lock you into a professional service ROI squashing machine.
Often technology is blamed incorrectly when what really should be blamed is poor integration and planning.
Labels: enterprise software, Integrate-ability, integration, purchase, vendors
3 Comments:
Simpler is Better
Better documentation and samples is unfortunately not a solution. Vendor products that are overly complex and inter-dependent on yet other 3rd party components make even the best written documentation and samples a huge tome of semi-mystical proportions.
Besides the up-front costs of overly complex products, purchasers are also saddled with purchase, annual maintenance, and in-house expertise training in the 3rd party dependances.
For each feature provided by a vendor's product, IT departments should be asking -- Why is this feature necessary to us? The more unrequired features a product has, the less focus on YOUR features the vendor will have.
When you're down to products with the right features, IT should be asking -- What baggage does this feature saddle us with? Here is often where vendors will try to convince you of the greater benefits of their way. This is just another kind of feature creep that has to be met by evaluating it as need vs want.
The less unncessary features, and the simplist implementation of them, will provide the easiest, fastest, most sucessful, and least costly integration both up-front, and long-term.
Paul,
Thank you. Great points. Now lets see if the vendors listen. Your point of unnecessary features reminds me of the issue in the ECM space of vendors spending all time creating connectors to all other industry platforms, when there are just a few that are even widely used. They will talk to you about their connectors until blue in the face.
ECM -- that means Extra Complicated Mechanisms?
Seriously, though --
I'm very old school. I've never run into anything so time-critical that a tab-delimited export by a Vendor system, plus a shell scripted import looping demeon, can't get data into legacy systems correctly and in a timely fashion.
Cost -- a few hours of shell scripting, done by inhouse staff, with no additional training or specialized expert knowlege to learn or maintain.
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