What Is Business System Integration?

Business system integration is the process of combining different business software systems into a cohesive and unified operation. Organizations often have diverse software systems—this can be due to different teams making different software decisions or because of business acquisitions, expansions, and process changes. Business system integration combines diverse systems to work together more cohesively with minimal human intervention. The goal is to allow data exchange and reuse between different software systems to streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve decision-making.

Companies that combine software systems using business system integration are privy to several benefits.

Reduces costs

When organizations maintain several different software platforms, they must manage infrastructure, licensing, and ongoing support for each. Business integration processes can unify several software platforms into one. With a singular platform, businesses spend less on management and get more from their software.

Removes data silos

Data silos become a challenge when different departments rely on different data infrastructures and tools. The singular, unified software platform that business integration processes provide helps to eliminate data silos and streamline data exchange.

Enhances customer experience

Providing a consistent customer experience across every touchpoint improves customer satisfaction. By incorporating customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and other core systems, you more effectively collect and use customer data. A streamlined customer journey improves the customer experience and increases satisfaction.

Improved business efficiency

Distributing tasks across several isolated systems decreases productivity. For example, a supply chain management system manages product shipping, while another platform covers inventory management. If these systems don’t connect, your business wastes resources with manual data entry to update each system. Business process integration provides seamless data exchange across software platforms, helping to streamline existing processes and enhance operational efficiency.

There are numerous strategies that businesses can use to integrate their systems, each serving different use cases and providing distinct benefits.

Point-to-point integration

Point-to-point integration establishes a connection between two endpoints. It extracts data from one endpoint and transfers it to another, streamlining data exchange. Since all endpoints may have different data formats, point-to-point integration involves a data transformation step at every connection.

Point-to-point integration is one of the earliest formats and excels in smaller systems. There are variations of point-to-point integration, like star integration, where each system connects to multiple other systems in the shape of a star.

However, as the number of systems increases, the number of connections increases exponentially. A five-system integration requires 24 connections, while a six-system integration may require 120! The increasing complexity of point-to-point integration makes it difficult to scale.

Hub-and-spoke integration

In the hub-and-spoke business process integration strategy, multiple systems all connect to one central hub. This hub collects and distributes data from each system to all connected applications. Like point-to-point integration, the hub transforms data as needed to ensure compatibility.

As all systems connect to one central hub, you only need one connection per new system. This strategy reduces the complexity of the integration architecture compared to point-to-point. However, this strategy also introduces a single point of failure, as everything depends on the hub.

Another variation of hub-and-spoke interaction is bus architecture. In bus architecture integration, all business systems connect to a central platform called the bus. This approach similarly simplifies management but can fail if anything impacts the operations of the bus.

Service-oriented architecture

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) maximizes the reusability of each software component. It builds software systems as individual services with a standard communication interface across them. All software components can interact with each other, providing integration.

Some SOAs use an enterprise service bus (ESB) to facilitate communication between these components. If needed, the ESB manages communication, routing, and transformation, facilitating connection across components. The ESB is useful in cases where large enterprises manage multiple complex systems.

In general, SOA is highly scalable, provides easy management options, and minimizes resource waste by boosting reusability.

Microservices architecture

Microservices architecture breaks down SOA services even further. The integration strategy reduces each service into the smallest possible components. Each component has a unique database, allowing you to maintain or scale them independently of one another. Microservices use APIs or standard protocols to communicate, removing the need for ESBs.

While microservices architecture is highly efficient, it requires advanced knowledge and skills to implement successfully.

Data virtualization

Data virtualization is an alternative approach to business integration. Data integration tools are used to create a virtual layer where businesses can store data from various sources. Data virtualization does not require a physical copy of data, removing the need for extensive data movements. This data integration approach offers a unified view of data while reducing data redundancy.

Below are the steps a company should follow when engaging with business system integration.

Objectives

First, you should determine why you want to conduct a successful implementation. Process integration can involve lots of work, making core objectives a useful target for the project. Outline the main reasons that drive the project, such as enhancing operational efficiency or migrating to cloud-native solutions.

Information capture

Conduct a complete systems analysis to take inventory of all the systems you currently have in your company. You can determine this by tracing each tool, platform, or software involved in various business processes. By listing all of the software applications you have to integrate, you can better plan an appropriate structure.

Business integration design

There are several potential business system integration strategies that you can choose from. Depending on the core business services you offer and their complexity, one of the options outlined previously may align best with your company. Plan which integration system offers the most benefits in line with the objectives you outlined in the first step.

Development

Once you have completed the planning stage, you can begin the integration process. The development stage collects the various business processes you have and provides an integration solution.

At this stage, it is also important to include security protocols to protect your company’s data. Especially if your business exists in a field that has stringent data security and privacy policies, you should take extra care to embed security into your integration strategy.

Testing and refinement

Before launching your business system integration, your business should undergo an extended testing phase. Even small human errors can lead to significant complications, making comprehensive testing imperative.

You can also use this step to streamline business processes based on new connections, uncovering areas to increase operational efficiency. Your integration solution may provide new connections that help with process automation.

Implementation and launch

Once fully tested, you can launch your business integration. At this stage, all your business processes will connect through your chosen business integration strategy. You can experience enhanced operational efficiency, smooth data transfer, and seamless platform communication.

Documentation

Your business should create documentation that records and charts your integration architecture—this is in order to comply with regulatory frameworks and compliance initiatives. Documentation is vital for compliance but also helps provide guidance for any future developers who work on your business integration architecture.

Improvement

Reviewing your integration architecture over time helps identify areas where you can improve. Depending on the initial business integration method you opted for, monitor opportunities for enhancement or the need to scale. Continuous improvement helps you adapt your integration over time to enhance efficiency.

Application integration on AWS is a service suite that enables communication between decoupled components within microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. You don’t need to refactor your entire architecture to benefit—decoupling applications at any scale reduces the impact of changes, making it easier to update and faster to release new features. For example:

• Amazon API Gateway allows developers to create, publish, monitor, and secure APIs for application integration.
• Amazon AppFlow is a no-code integration platform designed for communications between SaaS and AWS services.
• AWS AppSync helps developers create an API to access, edit, and combine data across multiple data sources.
• Amazon EventBridge allows developers to build a managed enterprise service bus for event-driven architectures.
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a high-throughput publish and subscribe messaging service for application-to-application integration (A2A).

The AWS Enterprise Transformation Program supports organizations in leveraging Amazon mechanisms, learnings, and working methods to drive faster integration. We work alongside your staff for experiential learning to better implement change and training.

Get started with business system integration on AWS by creating a free account today.