As everyone
understands, Integrations are always an important cog of any software ecosystem
built by us without which the enterprise architecture won't be complete to
exchange meaningful information. Integration requires massive distributed
effort in an organization which needs to be centrally managed, tracked and
controlled. Simply a complex equation, given that the individual components in
reality when start exchanging interactions in an enterprise architecture are
far more complex than the design specifications written initially topped up by
the operational processes & people trained to use the integration. In this
blog, we will take a look at Oracle Sales Cloud (OSC) to Siebel CRM application
integration, complexities involved followed by how an understanding of three
levels of Integration presented will help manage the complexities in a better
way and reduce integration risks.
Product Integration
The first level of
integration we are discussing in this blog, termed 'Artifact or Product
Integration' refers to the tie of up components in any two chosen applications
in an enterprise architecture. The main challenge every project team face is
towards configuring right business rule definitions per established standards
to build safe and secure bi-directional interactions between Cloud and On
premise applications. In the use case undertaken, few standard practices to be
adopted at this level include: exporting Siebel CRM records and imported in OSC
and vice versa for respective business entities, switch on or off
bi-directional sync of Account and Contact records, install Oracle Service Bus
(OSB) to perform configurations on respective WebLogic domain, enabling SSL on
the WebLogic server where OSB is deployed, enable SSL in interacting Siebel CRM
environment, and configure Siebel CRM to communicate with Oracle Service Bus
through SSL. The success factors towards product integration phase most
commonly falls towards how well the standard guidelines given by product vendor
is understood and executed leveraging OOTB frameworks such as ICS framework
which is available as prebuilt solution for all cloud integrations, how the run
time complexities are handled and finally on capabilities & competency of
the technical team performing design and build per established standards.
Human Integration
Having completed the
most fundamental part of tying up the individual system components of OSC and
Siebel CRM physically, understanding of the associated challenges, the next set
of complexities project team face is ensuring the human adaption towards the
integrations built, the most commonly ignored aspect which either project team
fails to cope up or undermines. With respect to our use case, the rate of
success in this level of integration could land the project governing team on
either side, be it welcoming the new capabilities of OSC followed by an easy
adoption, promoting increased agility within sales users, optimized sales
performance, stream lined channel sales execution reducing response time to
partners or the other way towards establishing hesitancy or resistance in
moving out of on premise Siebel landscape citing various constraints. Few
success factors that helps reducing complexities in this level of integration
include, hiring employees with right On premise and Cloud package skills and
conducting technical training classes for new recruits to enhance the
understanding and skills for existing crop of users, conduct change management
and interpersonal culture training.
Operational
Integration
Operational
integration defines the phase of the project where system/application
components along with the users are tied into the current sales organization's
business and operational processes. In the use case considered, OSC will be put
to operational use within the sales organization for Account and Opportunity
management, who for a while were used to the on premise landscape for executing
their sales business processes in the past. To help the project team reduce
complexities at this level, accelerate adoption time and assure a smooth influx
OSC culture into the current business and sales operational processes,
communication and advance planning are the key ingredients to be injected into
project team augmented by strong committed efforts from project senior
leadership team and sponsors. To succeed typically project team focuses on the
below change management guidelines for positive reinforcement, develop new
reward systems, changes to performance appraisal guidelines, incentive schemes
towards encouraging adoption of OSC-Siebel integration and providing continuous
feedback to sales team about how well they are doing with OSC-Siebel
integration.
On premise to Cloud integration projects is the toast of most companies to improve agility, reduce costs and experience faster deployments with customers focused to leverage the existing on premise investment and take advantage of the Cloud capabilities. There are numerous accelerators available to fasten the integration timeline and reduce implementation costs towards this depending on the product ecosystem. In addition, having the understanding of the above three levels of integration and deploying a core team having bottom line responsibility to govern, identify and mitigate major risks that come on the way towards ensuring success on all the above three levels will benefit the customer organization to not only grow top line but also to embrace the cloud technology walking into the future trend of architecture, Hybrid IT infrastructure successfully and majestically.