Information &Process Integration

Integrating the right systems for the right business reasons can be extremely valuable.

Process underpins business capability, and capability underpins business strategy. Thus, process thinking needs to be a type of strategic thinking, holistic, end-to-end, and with a strong focus on business goals set by strategy. 

Rethinking business process integration involves creating a well-planned infrastructure of core resources to support operations and innovation. This often requires configuring specific systems into a coherent architecture to deliver the necessary information services.

Key aspects to consider when rethinking business process integration:

-Cross-functional Systems: Functional information systems are often replaced by cross-functional systems that support complete business processes, enhancing the development and delivery of products.

-Enterprise Resource Planning: Integrate information systems across functional units like sales, marketing, production, finance, and human resources into an ERP system to support the entire value chain.

-Supply Chain Management (SCM): Implement an SCM system to manage the flow of products, data, money, and information throughout the entire supply chain, from raw materials to final delivery.

-Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Use a CRM system to support customer interactions in marketing, sales, service, and new product development, providing a unified view of each customer.

-Information System Infrastructure: Establish a coherent foundation of core telecommunications networks, databases, software, hardware, and procedures to support responsive change and organizational agility.

-System Architecture: Organize specific information systems that support operations, management, and knowledge work into a coherent whole, aligning with the organization’s long-term strategic plans.

Related Questions: Data integration enhances processes by providing a unified view of information, which supports better decision-making and more effective operations. Here’s how data integration improves processes:

Better Decision Making: Integrated data enables decisions based on facts, leading to benefits like evidence-based practices and resource efficiency.

Efficient Data Management: Information management (IM) systems, including databases, use efficient algorithms for data storage, retrieval, and updating.

Cross-functional Support: Integration replaces functional information systems with cross-functional systems that support complete business processes, improving product development and delivery.

Improve Business Intelligence: Data integration facilitates business intelligence, which uses tools and techniques to analyze collected information, helping businesses make the best use of their data.

Streamline Operations: Transaction processing systems, like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), integrate various functional units and manage the flow of products, data, and information across the supply chain.

Data integration improves data quality through the ETL process (extract, transform, and load), which is essential for preparing data for analysis.

-Extraction: Data is identified and copied from its original source, such as by running a database query to retrieve specific records.

-Transformation: This step involves cleaning the data to fit the analytical needs and the schema of the data warehouse, which includes changing formats, removing duplicate records, and renaming fields.

-Loading: Cleaned data is loaded into the data warehouse, where it can be combined with historical data and data from other sources.

Through these steps, data integration ensures that errors and inconsistencies are minimized, resulting in higher-quality data for analysis. Integrating the right systems for the right business reasons can be extremely valuable. However, in many cases, integration can be very difficult, costly, especially with highly disparate systems. The integration hairballs grow so complex that they begin causing dysfunctional systems and decelerating business performance. 

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