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5 Tough Integration Questions
Mark Denchy
(July 21, 2008)
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There are a lot of misconceptions about software integration. The concept can be deep enough to evoke hundreds of questions specific to a company’s back-end systems. Here are five common questions that many sales reps dance around, possibly because of either shortcomings in their products or a lack of knowledge on how integration is really implemented.
Mid-sized organizations may undertake either internal or external integrations, and projects can cross over data formats and system boundaries. One good example is integrating order data from an online store (typically in XML or an intermediary DB back-end) to an ERP system. It’s what many think of as a singular or monolithic integration: it connects two points, crossing data formats and system boundaries.
However, that’s often only part of the picture. A company may also want to move the information into a CRM application as a subsequent transaction. This is a complex, multistep integration. Some other examples involve legacy data movement, EDI and XML. Interestingly, there has also been an increase in spreadsheet-to-application integration, as spreadsheet formats emerge as a lower-end data-exchange standard du-jour, and as such represent a tempting staging area for incorporating into other applications.
Integration matters.
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