As a business owner or operator (or both!) in this day and age, you’re probably familiar with all the things you’re told you should do with your IT department. Modernize! Integrate! Standardize! Everyone should be using the same technology, the same systems, and it should all be state-of-the-art and probably from the year 3030 or something.
“Yes!” you think, “but how?”
We know you’re not made of money. If you’re frustrated by the thought of trying to bring together all the incongruent systems and processes you’ve collected over the years, without spending a huge amount of time and money to make that happen, we can help.
Here’s a quick look at our system integration process—that we designed with businesses like yours in mind:
Define Your Goals
The first step in successful system integration is determining what you want the end product to look like. What features do you have that you want to keep? What are the most important improvements that you need to make with this integration? And, perhaps the most commonly missed step: What improvements would you like to be able to make six or twelve months down the road? By taking the time to visualize your goals, you’ll be able to plan more efficiently and get the most out of your integration process.
Select Your Integration Architecture
Taking into account your current systems, data flow, interfaces, and syncing options, the next step is to decide what your new system will look like when it’s completed. For this step, you may want to bring in an expert IT consultant, since it can involve plotting out highly complex translations between data types, hardware and software requirements, and more. You’ll want to leave no stone unturned and plan out each part of the new system architecture down to the smallest detail. This stage is crucial to the success of your system integration process.
Put the Process in Place
Once the plan is complete, it’s time to build! In simpler system integration processes, this may just mean running updates and installing new software. In others, this may mean coding more efficient data flows between hardware that wasn’t originally designed to communicate with one another, which can be extremely complex—and very difficult without years of experience. Make sure you test your new process over and over again so that there are as few problems as possible when you’re ready to roll out to your team.
Ongoing Maintenance
It’s live! Now that your new integrated system is live, there’s probably a few bugs to work out and updates to make. But even then, your work isn’t done. Even after your team has worked out all the initial issues, and your business is operating at maximum efficiency with standardized systems across the board—you can’t just “fix it and forget it.” You’ll need to have a plan for ongoing maintenance, so that as technology continues to update, you can stay updated as well.
Ready to start your system integration? We can help you blend together disparate systems, enable communication between existing technology, and improve performance across the board—without requiring that you dump thousands of dollars into replacing hardware with the latest models. If that sounds like exactly what you’re looking for, contact Layer One Networks today.