Systems integration isn’t the most exciting IT subject, says John Tate, but it will cause untold problems if you aren’t fully on top of the problems.

One of most boring areas of technology that needs managing and developing has to be systems integration. Charities of any size have multiple IT systems supplied by different vendors – such as finance, CRM, payroll, HR and email. These different systems often don’t automatically link to each other and this creates a lot of headaches.

Multiple headaches

Headaches with reconciling the information in each system; headaches with trying to make sure processes that have been set up to create, amend or delete a record (eg a contact) in all the different applications are followed, and so the list of problems goes on. Most organisations end up with large amounts of information that is difficult to access and bring together, and each application will contain its own version of the truth.

Conventional technology has tried to offer ways of linking multiple applications. Options include data import-export and vendor-supplied APIs (application programme interfaces) to allow a third party to update their records ‘seamlessly’.

Suppliers such as Microsoft offer a wide range of third-party tools for workflow management and data integration, and of course manual processes have often been used where the technology does not really do the job.

More recently there has been an explosion of niche technology offerings, or ‘apps’ – based on the web or mobile devices – developed to fill gaps in established legacy products. But once again the problem is how do you get them to integrate with your existing systems and data?

For one-off use, simple data import-export may suffice. For example, taking a copy of some of your contact details from your CRM system and using these to run the application.

However, for repeat use the problem becomes more complex. For instance, what happens if someone wants to create a new contact using the app or to amend their own contact record? In this example, at the end of the process, you will want to update the information in your core CRM system – and ideally have this done automatically.

Over the last few months I have spoken to several of the leading software companies supplying solutions to the charity sector to get their views on this issue.

In the CRM example, vendors such as Blackbaud, with its Raiser’s Edge database software, are busy writing new features for their own products to meet demand for a new function. However many would argue that they simply cannot write enough code themselves to meet all of their users’ needs.

Cloud vendors such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics talk up the ease of integration with their own applications and encourage the purchase of third-party solutions to link with their own systems.

However this approach is often not as simple as it sounds – there have been occasions when these suppliers have terminated their relationships with third-party developers and so the technical support for ongoing integration stops being available.

I talked to a specialist development company called NetXtra about this challenge.

Significant work

They confirmed that the technical work required to link different systems can be significant. As one example, while a software company may offer APIs to their data, if they are poorly designed it can mean that a dozen or more of them need to be used to update the system with a new piece of information. This can lead to a significant amount of development work and testing.

Interestingly though, the biggest issue NetXtra faces on integration projects is the quality of the data itself. In some cases information is not accurate; in others they find people don’t fully understand what data they hold or how they actually use and manage it.

So, once again, if you are thinking of embarking on an IT project – particularly in an area as boring as systems integration – make sure you pay close attention to the people affected by the change and the processes you need to develop.

John Tate is a business consultant, and a visiting lecturer at Cass Business School.