IAN VANSTONE
VP Market Insights/Futures
Previously in this blog series, we let members of the C-Suite know that your company strategy and some of your personal ambitions are being killed by your inability to integrate systems effectively. We also showed why your organisational strategy is in trouble, by highlighting the link between a successful strategy and your ability to integrate.
In this blog, we’ll talk through what’s causing your strategy failure by looking at root cause integration issues so that you understand where things are going wrong, right now.
There are many integration issues, (each with a long list of root causes), that can impact your strategy. Here are some common issues and examples of root causes.
Issue 1 – Unintegrated systems
Still the biggest issue in most organisations is that systems are simply not integrated. The concept of integration has been in the mainstream for decades, but the prevalence of unintegrated systems is a strong sign that organisational integration capabilities are still not where they need to be.
Common root causes:
- Integration capability efficiency issues result in integration taking too long and costing too much.
- Technology architecture issues result in higher-than-expected team dependencies, which complicates and adds time and cost to delivery.
Issue 2 – Poor data quality
With this issue, systems are integrated but data turns up incorrect or incomplete. People (for instance, customers and staff) are often impacted by poor-quality data. People are also able to spot quality issues. Often of bigger concern to many organisations is where data quality issues have a significant impact but have a low detection rate (for example, in data related to compliance or financial reporting).
Common root causes:
- Data transformation defects alter data incorrectly in transit.
- Stability of systems results in data gaps during system outages.
Issue 3 – Insecure systems
The risk of security and privacy breaches keep many executives up at night. Integration fundamentally involves transporting data, often in large volumes and over complex architectures. If integrated systems are not secured effectively, this results in a large attack surface from a cyber-security perspective, as well as significant data privacy risks.
Common root causes:
- Security concerns are an afterthought, rather than an unavoidable foundation of all teams’ processes, technology design, and DevOps.
- Ineffective data controls and data monitoring/reporting.
Unintegrated systems, data quality, and security are just three of the biggest integration issues that can impact your strategy execution. There are far more that we’ve seen and could mention. And, with our deep experience, we know how to avoid them all.
Next in this series, we’ll discuss:
- The impacts of strategic failure, noting how your customers, your staff, your reputation, and your bottom line are feeling the pain.
- How to get your integration and your strategy back on track by fixing root causes and turning integration into a strategic enabler.
Fixing integration issues impacting your strategy requires deep expertise beyond the simple knowledge needed to expose or connect an API. If you suspect your organisation suffers from one or more integration issues highlighted in this blog, just ask one of your team to reach out. We’re ready to help.