With the advent of the Internet as a viable application platform, taking your business, or aspects of your business online is now an imperative. New methods of servicing customers, new methods of servicing and empowering your partners, or interacting with your vendors – it’s no longer a question of do we need to change, it’s a question of how do we start? How do we tackle it – how do we create an Internet-based presence for our organization that will deliver what we need? AND can we afford it?
Business people don’t have a lot of trust in their Information Technology counterparts to deliver what is needed, within the budget, and timeframe necessary. And given the past, and present demands on limited IT resources, it’s no wonder this state of affairs exists.
You're probably using CRM, have a website, have some sort of ability to allow employees access to internal resources through an intranet -- but how do you integrate those applications to provide the functionality that people need without having to access multiple systems separately? And, oh yeah, do it well, and not break the bank?
While large organizations can afford to try and fail many times, if you’re a small to mid-size business, you can’t afford to take that sort of gamble. You’ve got to create not only a successful presence, you’ve got to create a ‘capacity’ that allows you to be flexible and nimble with your online presence. And you don't have forever to figure it out.
There are a number of technologies and frameworks that can be deployed that will deliver an online presence, or fulfill on specific sets of functionality – but have you expanded your ‘capacity’ to create, modify, expand, and experiment in that online space? Can you create new initiatives easily and quickly? Are you nimble when it comes to providing online servicing of customers, partners, and prospects?
It's possible to move forward and create this kind of infrastructure without breaking the bank. We've worked successfully with our customers to create these sorts of "composite applications" -- leveraging our extensive set of ready-to-go functionality, that can be completely customized and integrated with existing applications through a Web Services interface, or through data level integration, depending upon the available technologies nd preferences of our customers.
Check out Optimize Magazine's articles on "Designing Applications for Constant Change" and "What's Next for Web Services" to get familiar with what's emerging and happening in the realm of leveraging technology for business benefit.
For more general information about Service Oriented Architecture, check out the following white paper, "Service-Oriented Architecture: A Strategy Brief".
In future posts, we'll continue to expand upon what's possible and how it's getting done. Working with a vendor who can help you think it through and be successful is a key to successful implementations.
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