66 4.11 Defining an integration approach
4.11
management system. The interfaces, the functionality, and the nature of
operatives using these applications are very different. How can integration
help in the ways outlined by webMethods?
The efficacy of such an approach depends on fully understanding the
ergonomics of data provision. For example, in the case of e-mail management,
the application should be able to instigate an appropriate data request auto-
matically if a message falls into a certain category~or at least prompt a
customer service representative with the necessary messaging request dialog
on screen. To put it another way, the interactivity between applications needs
to be proactive to facilitate some of the advantages that webMethods outlined.
Therefore, the issue is well-planned integration and an understanding of the
ergonomics of front-office applications. More fundamental even than this is
the requirement to source applications that are integration ready and ship
with connectivity services built in.
Defining an integration approach
Defining an organization's integration approach inevitably requires the
organization to have an idea of which application integration product it might
use in advance of choosing point applications.
It's worthwhile mentioning here that certain CRM software vendors state
that they offer suites of ready-integrated solutions that require no integration
middleware. There is only limited validity to this argument. Suite compo-
nents rarely offer best-of-breed performance and functionality. Moreover, as
indicated previously, components are likely to be used by different operatives
or in different situations, where it is likely to be difficult to know what infor-
mation might be required to satisfy customer need in advance. Finally, even
suites need to integrate with legacy applications; consequently, defining an
integration approach is still a necessity (increasingly, the preferred integration
approach will be to use open integration standards such as XML or SOAP, as
discussed further in this chapter).
But let's go back to how front-offlce integration solutions should be cho-
sen. There are some common-sense rules. But with the inevitable need to add
Web services to the mix at some stage in the future, a "watching brief" will be
required to ensure that the integration route can be used to help at least par-
tially populate a Web services "object store" at some date in the future.
In the same way that applications should be integration ready, enterprise
integration tools should work with a variety of applications, even applications
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