How can you ensure cost-effective IT integration?

- Are you getting the maximum value out of your integration platform? If not, understand why and how you can improve this. - Does your organisation have the correct governance, structure and capability to maintain and meet it's future integration goals? If not, how can this be achieved? - Are there any pain points being experienced? If so, what is the root cause?

Shift the focus from just technology to the people driving your organization. Consider the user experience, training needs, and potential resistance to change. A human-centric approach ensures that IT integration aligns seamlessly with your organizational culture, making it more readily embraced by your team.

-Understand your current IT environment. What systems, applications, and data do you have? How are they integrated? What are the pain points and challenges you are facing? -Define your desired state. What are your goals for IT integration? What do you want to achieve through integration? -Identify the gaps between your current state and your desired state. What systems, applications, and data need to be integrated? What processes and procedures need to be changed? -Develop a plan to address the gaps. What are the most important priorities? What resources and expertise will you need? -Implement the plan and monitor your progress. Make adjustments as needed to ensure that you are on track to achieve your goals.

I will share my experience of working on an IT integration project in Khartoum Health Insurance Corporation (KHIC), a public health insurance provider in Sudan. KHIC had more than 10 different software systems running different departments and functions, such as billing, claims, and customer service. These systems were not integrated with each other. There was no clear record of key performance indicators (KPIs), such as customer retention, claim processing time, or fraud detection rate. There was also a lot of paper work involved in the daily operations, which increased the risk of human errors and delays. Moreover, we could not predict what was going to happen in the coming future with a click.

Combine the strengths of different integration approaches with a hybrid strategy. This involves strategically blending on-premises solutions with cloud-based services. By doing so, you can capitalize on the efficiency of cloud integration while maintaining control over sensitive data and mitigating security concerns.

You need to consider the following factors: -Your budget: How much money can you afford to spend on IT integration? -Your timeline: How long do you have to implement the integration? -Your resources: What skills and expertise do you have in-house? -Your complexity: How complex is your IT environment? -Your requirements: What do you need to achieve through integration? Once you have considered these factors, you can start to evaluate different integration approaches. -Custom integration: This involves developing custom software to integrate your systems and applications. -Off-the-shelf integration: -Cloud-based integration: -Hybrid integration: This involves a combination of custom, off-the-shelf, and cloud-based integration.

I always was a fan of approach of making a single system, that cover all or most of your operational processes - CRM, EMR, ERP. In this case you avoid: 1. Need to support multiple products at once 2. Hubs, service buses and problems related to them 3. Need for additional BI instrument, that will provide you with the high level analytics anyway. This architecture is not common, and because of this I had to make my own system to fit this approach, almost 10 years ago.

To address these issues, we decided to initiate an IT integration project that aimed to connect all the existing systems and applications into a unified platform that could provide a seamless and personalized user experience for both internal and external users. We also wanted to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance our data analysis, decision making, and service delivery. We started by analysing the current situation, including the number of systems, their functionality and non-functionality, the infrastructure, the ability to integrate systems, and the use of AI. We also analysed our budget and resources for the project. Based on our analysis, we identified our main objectives and requirements for the IT integration project.

Embrace agile methodologies for a more adaptive and responsive IT integration. Break down the project into iterative cycles, allowing for continuous feedback and adjustments. This approach not only accommodates evolving stakeholder needs but also facilitates early issue detection and course correction, ultimately enhancing the overall project efficiency.

-Plan carefully. Before you start integrating your systems and applications, take the time to develop a detailed plan. -Use the right tools and technologies. There are a variety of tools and technologies available to help you integrate your systems and applications. Choose the tools and technologies that are best suited for your needs and requirements. -Automate as much as possible. Automation can help you to reduce costs and improve efficiency. -Test thoroughly. Before you deploy your integration solution, be sure to test it thoroughly to ensure that it is working properly. -Monitor your system. Once your integration solution is deployed, monitor it closely to identify any problems.

-Choose the right integration approach. Consider your budget, timeline, resources, complexity, requirements when choosing an integration approach. -Use automation and orchestration. Automation and orchestration can help you to reduce costs and improve efficiency. -Adopt cloud-native integration patterns. Cloud-native integration patterns are designed to help you to integrate your systems and applications in a cloud-native way. -Use microservices architecture. Microservices architecture can help you to develop and deploy loosely coupled. -Adopt DevOps practices. DevOps practices can help you to break down the silos between development and operations.

When selecting vendor systems in view of integration, think about compatibility of systems architecture, security needs, availability of APIs, flexibility and timeliness for user driven changes, support needs and of course, costs. Future proofing is also an important consideration given today’s rapid technological advancement. I would say the costing structure and ROI is a very important consideration toward sustainability of the entire IT ecosystem.