Integrate to accumulate

At Kent-based electronics subcontract manufacturer EMS Manufacturing, work is underway to integrate the company's Exel EFACS E/8 ERP system with an in-house-developed customer order quotation system, a CRM system, and a mobile data connectivity capability. The objective? To create the ability for salespeople to visit a customer's premises and, while there, issue the customer with a quotation based around current inventory positions and the customer's own specifically-negotiated component prices – all accessed in real time, while sitting in front of the customer. It is, says EMS operations director Chris Mulvihill, a project that is entirely in keeping with the company's approach to both IT in general and integration in particular. "You have to think about the business context and the best way of solving a particular problem from the point of view of the business," he says. "It's about understanding information needs and what it's possible to achieve with the information flow that you'll create by building links between systems." For his part, EMS' group business systems manager Marc Springthorpe-Rose emphasises the hard-nosed nature of the decision process that led to the project. "We're quite brutal about focusing on what is best for the business," he says. "At all costs, we avoid having the IT 'tail' wagging the business 'dog'. We don't slavishly insist on one supplier for all our needs, for example: we go for the best solution, even though it might not be the easiest to integrate with our other systems." In a growing number of businesses, it turns out, such sentiments are being heard increasingly often. Why? Because integration, it transpires, is becoming an increasing necessity, especially when it's integration in the context of an ERP implementation project. As at EMS, other manufacturers are seeing growing merit in something that they would once have shied away from. For not so many years ago, ERP systems were largely self-contained 'standalone' affairs. Integration, where necessary, was in respect of legacy systems that would soon be abandoned, and their functionality rolled into the ERP system. No longer. For many manufacturers, integration to standalone applications has become vital. ERP remains important, to be sure, but important pieces of functionality lie outside it. Look no further than Salesforce.com CRM, for instance, or Microsoft's hosted Microsoft CRM. Or advanced planning and scheduling systems such as Preactor, for another – installed either 'on-premises', or in the cloud. Or Google Applications. Or any number of hosted or on-premises specialist route planning and optimisation engines, manufacturing execution systems, or e-commerce and EDI systems. To each of these, the ERP system must be integrated – often not just in terms of one-way integration, but two-way integration. Best practice ERP implementation So what constitutes best practice when contemplating ERP implementation in such an environment? How should manufacturers approach such integration-intensive scenarios? How do today's implementation imperatives – when integration is so central to success – differ from yesterday's imperatives, when it wasn't? Talk to those close to the issue and some interesting perspectives emerge. To begin with says Sally Waterston, director and head of manufacturing at specialist IT consultant and integration specialist Waterstons, too many companies focus too much on the core ERP implementation. "They leave external integration issues until the end of the project and then find out that they've run out of time, or money, or that they can't get the functionality or reports that they want," she notes. "Instead, they should start with integration, especially when it involves customer-facing EDI and e-commerce systems, because this is how orders will arrive and invoices will be issued." Carl Tomlinson, principal consultant at The Manufacturing Institute, makes a similar point. "The tendency towards a greater amount of integration serves to make the overall implementation even larger than it was before which simply underpins the importance of getting it right," he stresses. "It's vital to be clear about what you're doing and why you're doing it." But that, perhaps, is easier said than done. So focus on the business outcomes expected from integration, urges Andy Gough, general manager at ERP provider KCS Datawright. "Ultimately, the purpose of the exercise is better control and not simply to undertake ERP integration for its own sake," he points out. "The issue isn't one of, say, integrating to a shopfloor data capture system, but instead one of how best to extract value from that data. Capturing the data and integrating it with other systems is pointless if it doesn't actually add value." And if such answers aren't crystal clear, it could be time to step back and revisit the objectives of the overall implementation, suggests Rue Dilhe, managing director of ERP provider Exel Computer Systems. "It's always worth re-establishing the business requirements and goals of a new implementation," he advises. "Because it takes many months to select a system, and because, in the process, you'll be talking to a number of providers as well as to other manufacturers, it's quite possible for a different view to emerge as to what the priorities should be. The initial requirements specification is a starting point, not something to be regarded as written in stone." It's a point echoed by Nick Castellina, research director for business planning and execution at analyst firm Aberdeen Group. "Look carefully at opportunities to minimise the integration challenge by maximising the use of the functionality present in the ERP system," he concludes "Just because you use a 'point solution' now – be it finite capacity scheduling, CRM , or quality management – doesn't mean that you necessarily need that same point solution going forward." 5 steps to seamless integration 1 Focus on the integration that is absolutely necessary. EDI links to customers and suppliers is a business requirement whereas integrating to a cloud-based CRM system might be avoided if a new ERP system has decent CRM functionality. 2 When it comes to ease of integration, not all ERP systems are equal. Choose one that does the 'grunt' work for you, advises Phil Lewis, senior director for solution consulting at Infor. 'Baked in' integration layers, middleware, and a standard business language go a long way to ease the integration burden. "It's a lot easier to address new processes and practices when you don't have to wrestle with unwieldy software," adds Guy Amoroso, managing director at ERP provider 123 Insight. 3 Avoid customisation, advises John Hamman, manufacturing industry business development lead at SAP. Only customise where it adds to, or complements, competitive edge and be aware that the more customisation, the greater the challenge of maintaining and integrating the system. 4 Invest in understanding your business processes, especially where they cut across systems and require integration. Integration points are often where things go wrong, or work sub-optimally. Are there delays in data exchange? Data loss? Different definitions? Such details matter. 5 Compared to implementing a self-contained ERP system, integration is costly. So understand why you're integrating two (or more) systems, and what you intend the business outcome of such integration to be.