Integration Errors – How good planning can minimise their impact

Research has shown that up to 84% of digital transformation projects partly or completely fail to deliver. When those projects have a large integration element they fail 50% more than projects with smaller integration requirements. A study by McKinsey-Oxford in 2012 suggested that 17% of failing projects threatened to destroy the organisations implementing them.

In 2018 Santander and TSB merged their IT systems. Their plan included data migration and integration but it wasn’t addressed until very late in the programme. The failure was catastrophic, locking millions of customers out of their accounts for weeks. A bank spokesperson was quoted as saying ‘It was all going very well until the last stages, when we started to look at the integration phase.’ Integration specialists the world over listened in horror. The programme was always going to be complex and the data integration would be the hardest part.They should have been planning it right from the start. If they had ensured that the error handling was comprehensive and accurate they could have saved a lot of heartache.

The FCA imposed a fine on Santander of £48,650,000 for operational risk management and governance failures, including management of outsourcing risks, relating to the bank’s IT upgrade programme.

Even at a smaller scale, effective error alerting and fixes can be problematic. How many times have you waited for a process to complete successfully, but find that something has become stuck in the pipes somewhere. It could be that the data in your report is out of date or a document you were expecting has not materialised. You have had no notification of the issue and only find out what has happened when you speak to IT. They do some digging – which can take hours – and find that an interface has failed or a key variable like a Cost Centre, is locked in the ERP and unavailable to the process. They fix it, but time has moved on and you may have missed an important sale or a report to the Board. Frustration all round.

Organisations rely on processes completing smoothly with no errors. The advent of machine learning and AI has given system users the expectation that data will flow on time, accurately and securely. If a problem arises, the assumption is that it will be found and fixed automatically without you having to intervene. Sadly, this doesn’t always happen. If errors keep cropping up, your integration infrastructure needs review.

Curing the errors needs careful planning too. Handling, diagnosis and fix need to be managed quickly and efficiently. It is important that the fix returns the system and data to the expected state without introducing further glitches or losing and damaging the data. It is vital that the integration process is idempotent – it can be applied again without duplicating or deleting data. It needs to be able to run multiple times without turning your data into confetti.

If you are lucky enough to have Coupa in your systems landscape, it will be connected to one or more ERP functions. There will be other peripheral systems in the mix. Coupa manages your processes very well but if data posted in or out sometimes goes astray, you may need a better integration solution to tie everything together.

You could design one from scratch and build it in-house. This will keep your IT team busy and you might feel you are going to get exactly what you think you need. Designing and implementing complex integration is no easy job, though. Sometimes in-house teams spend months, even years, trying to work out how to get data in one format transformed into the format required by the end point system. 

Building effective integration that handles and fixes errors swiftly, without business impact, is an art. It is vital that the designers understand how applications at the ends of the integration solution are structured. They need to know what shape the data needs to be at all stages and how the choreography of the data movements should work. Timing is everything.

It is a bit easier when the two end points are known to each other. But, why build something from scratch when the standard integration designs have already been created  by experts and the data pipes already exist. You could also benefit from integration functions that are managed, updated and retested by the team that designed them. This is what ERP acceleration really means. Your data will travel on roads that are constructed and maintained to ensure efficiency, accuracy and availability, 100% of the time.

Even if you have bespoke requirements that need unique solutions, wouldn’t it be better to give this complex task to people who have years of experience and know how integration works?

Mandant’s ERP Accelerator for Coupa gives you a set of integrations that are fully embedded into the Coupa internal integration management function. This means that alerts are automatically sent to your systems management application when errors occur. The pathways are well known and understood. All possible conditions are predicted and planned for. Detailed alerts are documented and provided to your IT support and maintenance function. They can act on the issues, with no time wasted, usually without you having to call them. 

Talk to us today to find out how MATRIX can eliminate the impact of systems errors and ensure your business processes run smoothly.

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To find out how we can help you deliver and manage effective, robust and accurate data to your systems.

Mandant have 25 years’ experience of delivering integration solutions to satisfied clients. Find out today how they can help you manage difficult change. 

Find out more about how Mandant can solve your integration challenges and help accelerate your Coupa, SAP ERP or other integration project. Visit www.mandant.net or email info@mandant.net 

Mandant’s ERP accelerator for Coupa, MATRIX, is listed on the Coupa App Marketplace

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