Disclaimer: The
articles in this blog post are those that I found interesting and
relevant to the topic of ERP and technology in general. I have no
commercial association with any of the entities mentioned in this
article. I may be following a few of these entities on LinkedIn and even
some of these entities may be on my LinkedIn or Social Media network.
These articles are selected purely based on their relevance to the
objective of this blog, to promote ERP. Finally, the summary is mine.
While I stay close to the points in the articles, I also elaborate a few
of them based on my understanding.
The Short URL for this post is http://bit.ly/ERP_Integration
The steps in ERP Implementation are:
5. ERP Implementation: ERP Project Management
6. ERP Implementation: Requirements Gathering
7. ERP Implementation: Solution Design
8. ERP Implementation: Solution Testing
9. ERP Implementation: End user training
10. ERP Implementation: RICE
11. ERP Implementation: Integration
12. ERP Implementation: Data Conversion
6. ERP Implementation: Requirements Gathering
7. ERP Implementation: Solution Design
8. ERP Implementation: Solution Testing
9. ERP Implementation: End user training
10. ERP Implementation: RICE
11. ERP Implementation: Integration
12. ERP Implementation: Data Conversion
13. Post Implementation Support and Stabilization
The topic of this week is ERP Integration. As Lindsey Jenkins says in her article (#5), with the advent of Postmodern ERP, the subject of integration has acquired a new significance. The first article identifies four best practices to be considered for ERP Integration including building a business case and ensuring data integrity. The second article by Glenn Johnson points out eleven technical factors to be considered while deciding on integration strategy. The third article is a cheat sheet on Oracle Commerce Cloud (OCC). The reason it finds a place here is because it provides examples of about 20 different use cases to integrate OCC with external applications. An integration strategy between any two different application should consider a structured approach as detailed in this article.
The fourth article on ERP Integration tools is a list of common tools and applications that should integrate with ERP. I did not find much of a value in that article. The fifth article is a detailed one discussing the benefits, challenges, approaches and pitfalls to be considered while thinking about ERP integration.
Good articles. Do read and let me know what you think.
Top Five Articles
1. Best Practices for ERP Integration: ERP Software Blog
https://www.erpsoftwareblog.com/2015/01/best-practices-erp-integration/
The four best practices mentioned in this article makes a lot of sense. They are.
- Build a business case: Many a time integration with other applications are built incrementally without a thorough management oversight. A business case will identify who is impacted by integration, how much it will benefit the user and will provide the cost benefit and RoI analysis that will ensure that the Organization will make an informed decision
- Get the right people on board: At least three skills are important. An application analyst, an expert on the integration tool and a project manger. You may also need a developer. Do not start the work with the four skills being available.
- Plan your integration points: Identify the source, the target, direction of data flow and the frequency. What is not mentioned in the article is the data mapping (One to one, one to many, many to one or many to many)
- Audit the data: to ensure that it is current, relevant and usable. Review the data transfer volume and the impact on the network. In my opinion this step is very important since I have seen many testing hours wasted since the integration failed due to bad data.
Ensure that the integration is well planned and uses the lightest footprint.
Nice article. Thank you Cody Pierson.
2. ERP Integration patterns and best practices: Glenn Johnson for IT Tool Box
https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/glennjohnson/enterprise-resource-planning-erp-integration-patterns-and-best-practices-072310
I am a functional consultant or application analyst or whatever you call. When I talk of integration I talk of the functional aspect of the integration, what are the business requirements, what are the users going to do, what is the information to be integrated etc. However developing an integration is mostly a technical activity. There are many technical aspects to be considered while thinking about integration, This article by Mr.Glenn Johnson crisply explains the top technical factors to be considered while developing an integration. These are:
- The integration application platform must be able to work with different platforms and operating systems that are different from the ones that your ERP runs on.
- Ensure to choose the right middleware that are integrated and meets the complete requirements. Most of the available ones are disjointed and paradoxically their components are 'not integrated'.
- Ensure that your integration monitor uses the same visual interface as the integration design studio. This will ensure better control over execuation
- Ensure that your integration solutions can adapt to many technologies including messge queues, unstructured text data, multi-dimensional arrays, availability of complete range of logical operations.
- The adapters provided off the shelf by the application vendors should support communication protocols, file systems, encryption/decryption, networking and other lower-level more finely grained technology.
- Integration solution should enable ERP to provide services based on composite applications. These are platform agnostic applications that are assembled using both components from multiple existing applications and added functionality developed specifically as services such as read customer order, validate customer status etc
In addition the author mentions loosely coupled architecture (modular design of components) (7), stateless components that can handle multiple parallel sessions (8), incorporating dynamic components which refresh the configuration of components with any changes in the target environment (9), avoiding the use of web services since they consume lot of system load (10) and finally a well thought out use of Enterprise Service Bus for integration (11).
This was written about nine years ago, but the ideas presented in this are still relevant. I am saying this because I still see many of the above mistakes being made when it comes to integration.
Thank you Glenn Johnson for this wonderful article...
3. ERP Integration: Best practices to drive digital transformation (Downloadable PDF)
http://bit.ly/2J3JiyE
In writing this top 5 blog posts, I give special emphasis to 'best practices'. That is why the title of this document interested me. However, this is not a best practices document, but more of a Cheatsheet on Oracle Commerce Cloud (OCC), However it also talks of Oracle ICS (Integration Cloud Service) that can help integrate between applications both on cloud and On-premise. The article outlines the principles of ICS as applicable to OCC and the principles used in this can be used for generic integrations as well.
ICS comes packaged with many adapters that help you connect Oracle and other third party application like Oracle EBS and SAP.It also offers integration flow best practices around movement and transformation of data between applications. While this article is too technical for me to understand, what I got is
that there are many pre-built REST Web Services (end points) that helps
make your integration plug and play. I also understand that these web
services make the integration modular in nature and you can modify a
specific service to reflect changes in your source or target application without impacting the other services.
ICS for OCC leverages REST (REpresentational State Transfer) web services framework that use HTTP based integrations to connect applications. The article also provide a set of 20 use cases that showcase the the two way data flow between OCC and external application.
A technical expert will get a lot of value out of this document I think.
4. The best ERP Integration Tools: Solution Review
https://solutionsreview.com/enterprise-resource-planning/best-erp-integration-tools/
The basic tools in ERP are:
- Accounting and Financial: audits, cash flow planning, reporting and payroll
- HR: employee training, payroll and time management
- Supply Chain Management (SCM): inventory control. routing and warehouse management
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): contact information and social media management
- Project Management (PM): scheduling and task management
In addition, ERP has tools like,
- Information / workflow management tools
- Reporting and dashboard tools
- Analytical tools
5. ERP Integration: Strategy, Challenges, Benefits and Key Types: by Lindsey Jenkins for Selecthub.com
https://selecthub.com/enterprise-resource-planning/best-erp-software-integrations/
The benefits of ERP Integration are:
- Centralized data
- Automated process
- Workflow visualization
- Reduction in human error
- More time for labour intensive work
The section 'Types of ERP Integrations' should have been named 'Types of external applications commonly integrated with ERP'. These are:
- CRM
- Business Intelligence
- HR
- Project Management
- eCommerce
The different approaches to ERP Integration are:
- Point to Point
- Custom Applications
- Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Some of the challenges in ERP Integration are:
- Lack of a coherent strategy: In many cases ERP integrations can become an adhoc activity as new applications or new requirements come up. Organizations normally start off by integrating custom applications and outsourced payroll process with ERP. Later, Bank Integrations will come into play. In addition, Organizations will also want to augment their processes with mobility solutions. Integration of each new application is considered on a case by case basis making integration unmanageable over a period of time (most often during the next ERP upgrade)
- Maintaining the ERP Integration as environment changes
- Some of the legacy application may not have integration features: It is best to look for cloud applications that can meet the requirements.
Potential pitfalls of integration include complexity, cost, training and customization (not sure how this is linked to integration)
What are the factors to be considered before deciding on integration?
- Will all the operations of a company will be integrated in ERP solution?
- Does the integration call for data migration? How will this be handled?
- Do the vendor have experience in my industry?
- Total cost of ownership of the integration solution
- Do we really need this integration? Is there a work around? Can we change our processes?
As ERP evolves in the age of #digitaltransformation and new technologies like Cloud, AI and ML, companies are again looking at loosely coupled ERP solutions integrating best of breed solutions to get the maximum RoI on their IT investments. In this scenario, the topic of integration is attaining a new relevance.
Nice article. Thank you Lindsey Jenkins
Additional Reading
1 A beginners guide to ERP Integration: Tom Miller for ERP Focus
https://www.erpfocus.com/beginners-guide-to-erp-integration-1736.html
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