Monthly Ponderings - Integrated vs integrative 

R Kolb (Munich)

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Within the past months, I had plenty of meetings and discussions with people from various IT suppliers, partners and customers. Very often, the phrase integrative vs. integrated stuck in my mind. And it bothered me. How so? 

 

An example: Bob – the manager of department X in company Y – feels that he can optimize his department’s internal processes dramatically by rolling out an enterprise software package he has seen at a trade show. This software is designed to supplement an ERP with domain-specific functionality.

 

First, he needed a high level business case, which – given the cost-saving implications of Bob’s idea – was easy and of course immediately approved.

 

Second, he needed to clarify the departmental needs and ensure the solution fits these appropriately. Check.

 

Now for the ‘organizational’ IT requirements. And here it is, the typical dilemma: going to market, should he choose the solution best for the IT-environment, or best for the department? Sometimes these are one in the same. Other times they are not.

 

Choosing the best solution for the department may result in complex integration issues, or simply be deemed architecturally unacceptable. Choosing the best for the IT-environment may not satisfy the departmental business requirements anywhere near as well! Another problem is the budget, especially for customized adaptations within the product (special departmental requirements, etc.). All of a sudden, the business case starts looking shaky.

 

A customer has to decide, either to take an ‘integrative’ solution that might be the optimum for integration into existing infrastructure and a compromise in respect of business needs (without major, expensive customization), or  an ‘integrated’ solution that optimizes departmental needs but compromises an otherwise seamlessly integrated IT environment.

 

Now for the good news: these two are no longer necessarily mutually exclusive. Rapidly emerging state-of-the-art interoperability toolkits (such Olinqua’s Seria product range) make integrated solutions integrative, satisfying both Bob’s and organizational IT’s requirements – without compromise. More importantly, outsourcing complex integration risk to a specialist vendor reduces resource bindings and budgetary risks substantially.

 

All of a sudden, Bob’s business case is looking healthier than ever.