Associations, colleges, and even telecommunications providers often have member-facing portals which collect information from a wide variety of systems and allow those members to make changes to that information (e.g. by adding a new subscription). Ideally, all of the details of that change are immediately available to the member throughout the portal and any 3rd party they may be redirected to. For example, if their new subscription gives them access to a research platform, they expect to see a new link to that platform show up, and give them the access they paid for.
What is Software Integration?
Making all of these systems work together is the job of integration. The payment system needs to let the membership system know to activate the membership. The membership system then needs to let the portal know to display the link. Finally, the research platform needs to be able to validate the current membership and understand the benefits and limitations of the member. Sometimes these components are designed to work together and there’s no issue, but often those pre-built connections need a bit of extra information, or there’s an extra connection necessary that isn’t supported out-of-the-box. This is where custom software shines as a means of keeping each component within the wider system up-to-date and working as expected.
Getting Started
Integration projects, by definition, contain many moving parts. Often, each of those parts has a variety of options available that can be used to create connections. This is rarely a LEGO situation where there are standardized connectors that just work without any extra effort. Therefore, the initial step is to evaluate the options and understand the requirements. While it may be tempting to come up with a plan before getting everyone involved, we advocate for including the whole team in discovery, so that the project doesn’t get started down a road that’s costlier than necessary or provides lower value than it could. Having engineers, designers, and strategists all together with business owners allows the full solution space to be explored, evaluating all of the trade-offs. Is this a long-term or interim solution? How much delay is acceptable? Is this new integration good enough to replace the old system?
The best plan will be one that works for the organization and its members. Start incrementally, defining the minimum requirements and then monitoring the budget and timeline as improvements are considered. Quantify the cost of the current process (e.g. the delays and inaccuracies from manual processes or the expected income once this new process is available) and use that to determine whether to continue improving the integration. Some projects are cut and dried, others are ripe for continuous fine tuning that delivers a compound return.
Benefits of Integration
Whether connecting an Association Management System (AMS) with an internal database or an e-commerce platform with a 3rd party service, integration is a major part of software projects. Centralizing data and automating decision making, done well, can pay back dividends, in addition to the improved customer and employee satisfaction when everything just fits together automatically. A professional team with a diversity of skills can save integration projects from getting off on the wrong foot, focusing on delivering tangible value and working results.