Business Process Integration and Effective Information Management

Businesses today are in a challenging environment. On the heels of the worst economic downturn in a generation, many businesses today have a big enough challenge just keeping up.

One challenge affecting a company's performance and their ability to remain competitive is information – complete, transparent and real-time access to information for an entire organization is an invaluable asset in weathering the current economic climate.

Many enterprise IT systems today though are not interconnected. Take this one example as an illustration:

XYZ Enterprises' marketing and sales department believes revenues from last year were $15 million. They use this number as a guide in where to focus their efforts and how much they spend doing it. However, data from the accounting department says XYZ had only $12.5 million in revenues last year because their system factors in discounts and returns.

Why the difference in numbers? It's likely the two departments are not interconnected, therefore causing marketing and sales to base their decision on erroneous numbers.

Business process integration (BPI) eliminates information “silos” like these

A wide variety of industries, from finance to healthcare and retail to manufacturing implement BPI programs and procedures to knock down information silos that develop because of different IT systems within an organization.

Business process integration systems like Microsoft's BizTalk Server connect these disparate systems to streamline the flow of information between different entities within an organization.

Departments using different enterprise IT systems with common data requirements and processes come together in these type systems. The benefits of this unification will be not only be seen in the bottom line, but also in the ease at which employees will be able to access timely and accurate information.

Management will also be able to hold their employees more accountable with streamlined guidelines stemming from the implementation of a BPI system like BizTalk.

Business process integration consultants at Innovative Architects can help you knock down these information “silos” and implement an interconnected IT system that will help your company operate more effectively.