A Golden Rule: Do Your Data Mapping
What does systems integration have in common with a famous archaeological discovery? More than you might initially think. Before we dive in, let’s take a trip back to the year 1922, and to the place, Ur, in what is now Southern Iraq. Discovery and excavations of this mighty Sumerian city go back even further to the 1600s. However, the excavations from 1922 to 1934 led by the archaeologist, Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, are recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeological sites excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history.
The city itself dates back to circa 3800 BC. Among so many other Ur discoveries, Sir Charles Leonard Woolley is credited with discovering 1,850 burial sites, and deemed 17 of them ‘Royal Tombs.’ Sparing the reader any gory details, and there are plenty, these tombs were filled with vast amounts of precious metals and jewelry. The treasure troves of gold have been featured in countless exhibits, and have travelled around the globe, always attracting large audiences simply to see this amount of ancient gold. Might you see where this is going?
There were many important aspects to the excavation of Ur, like uncovering details about culture, society, arts, and family life, among a multitude of other important features. Still, it was the gold which made the biggest societal impact. Thankfully, as previously mentioned, Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and his team took great pains in maintaining a methodical integration of artifacts (including treasure) to the proper place and department for further research. Now imagine if the team simply decided to excavate without a detailed plan. Imagine if the experts on the ground simply said, “Ok, yeah, let’s put the stuff over there in that pile… we can sort it out later.” Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Herein lies a simple-to-solve problem which endlessly plagues systems integration ‘experts’ to this day. As the saying goes, “Data is gold.” Data and data integration, the precious metal of our industry and lifeblood of our businesses is so often simply put aside, and dealt with as an afterthought.
Proper data mapping, and planning for all attributes of the data usage must be incorporated in the initial analysis phase of any systems integration planning. Handling data as an afterthought, or dealing with data during an iterative design flow is just begging for deeper budget burn and longer timelines than initially discussed and agreed upon. Done properly, data mapping will avoid burning budget and lengthening timelines. Even more important, proper data mapping can unlock ‘operational data’ for your business, a type of strategic data ideal for internal control and operational environment information like data on your company's workforce and more.
There is no magic wand for proper handling of data. Data mapping exercises are a crucial must-have step not to be skipped. Even when utilizing ‘Integration Process as a Service’ a data mapping exercise must be performed, simply because there will be even more ‘gold’ to handle.
Woolley was granted knighthood in 1935, specifically for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology. Properly handling data in this day and age probably won’t grant you knighthood. Although, your client might see you as the knight in shining armor they didn’t know they needed, and that’s indeed worth something special to work toward.
Unified Commerce Will Preserve Your Business, Now and Into the Future
Unify (v); to make or become united, uniform, or whole.
Unity (n); the state of being united or joined as a whole.
The theme behind this blog is simple enough; things always work better when they work as a whole. Using a food example; think about dining experiences at your favorite restaurant. Sure, there are more good days, and there are some bad days. More often than not, the food is great, and the service is too. Contrast the good days with the bad; the food might be mediocre (on the cold side, undercooked, overcooked), and the service is seemingly lacking.
Any number of reasons might contribute, but more often than not the bad days have something to do with the front of the house and the back of the house being out of sync, unable to unify in their efforts toward customer satisfaction. It’s as if the 2 groups are speaking different languages, moving at different speeds, and seeking different outcomes. Where’s the united front that made me love this restaurant in the first place?
Nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in eCommerce. I’m sure you’ve also experienced ununified eCommerce at least once in your online life. Even if the purchase process on a website or app runs smoothly, acquiring the goods is an entirely different story. This is typically because the frontend and the backend of the experience aren’t matching up as they should. It’s 2021, time to leave this misstep in the past.
If it’s possible to say there was a silver lining at all to 2020, it’s how the pandemic acted as a global accelerator. On so many levels, it showed us our strengths, and equally as important, it showed us our weaknesses. In business, it threw practices roughly a decade into the future within the length of 1 solar year. The effects were felt throughout the spectrum from the one-person shop all the way to the mightiest of companies. If a business had only a store front, doing business was nearly impossible to continue. One rung up the ladder, if a business had an online presence, but no approach to backend fulfillment, the chaos was only slightly less. However, those businesses best positioned for the shutdown accompanying a global pandemic were those with a unified commerce business model already in place.
Unified commerce companies were able to continue operations for the most part, with slight adjustments, of course. Consumers were able to buy online, and choose their method of fulfillment, all as a seamless experience. This process is fluid due to frontend and backend cohesion. Data and information from all parties involved lines up, and with a unified commerce experience, the left hand knows what the right hand is doing so to speak, and vice-versa.
Consumers feel the unified commerce experience. There’s little to no friction, and this creates a happy and fulfilled customer. Compared to a bad customer experience with a less-than-unified experience; both the consumer and the business feel the negative effects of a bad experience. Marketing research indicates 12 positive experiences are needed to repair damage caused by 1 unresolved negative one. A daunting ratio for certain. The great news for businesses of all sizes? Microsoft has recently re-entered the eCommerce arena. This means a unified eCommerce platform is readily available, suited to the reality we’re living in today. More importantly, it’s making it easier to create the seamless customer experiences consumers are expecting.
PunchOut Catalogs: Procurement WIN for Big and Small!
Digital Transformation is on a roll. Industry by industry, tool by tool, and step by step, transformative innovations are making easy work of outdated tools and processes for both consumers and employees alike. Procurement management, along with many other disciplines, is being reinvented by digital transformation. Procurement professionals help business operations run smoothly ensuring all necessary items and services are acquired properly. In addition, they focus on eliminating off-contract spending, using negotiated vendor contracts, increasing the overall efficiency of the procurement process, and more. Still, how can ‘procurement’ save even more money, time, and resources, all while creating a streamlined experience for buyers? Behold! PunchOut Catalogs are an excellent example of using the latest innovative methods for procurement projects and processes to proceed smoothly, efficiently, and successfully.
PunchOut Catalogs are e-procurement applications that allow a buyer to access a supplier's website from the buyer's procurement application. An e-procurement system utilizing a PunchOut Catalog provides 24/7/365 access to an online catalog and automates related documents like purchase orders, invoices, and advance shipping notices, among others.
Traditional procurement systems use more hands-on methods of filling, reviewing, and sending order requests. Think telephone calls and faxed forms (*Cue hold music*). Catalog items were manually entered into procurement systems when a purchase order was created. Or, the item was located in the procurement system master catalog and then added to the purchase order.
Procurement systems developed the ability to import supplier catalogs directly into their own procurement system. (*Someone in 1996*, “Hooray!”) The standardized Catalog Interchange Format (CIF) helped buyers tremendously by eliminating manual entering of item information. Suppliers easily published catalogs, buyers easily imported them. The buying organization, more specifically, the purchasing department, still had the responsibility of entering the catalog information, then converting it between electronic forms. Doable, but still not exactly ideal while maintaining costs. Progress, nonetheless.
While eProcurement systems proved extremely useful, not every B2B business had the capital to make themselves compatible with any and every eProcurement system on the market. Recent innovations in PunchOut Catalog technology provide the essential bridge between eCommerce websites and the ever-increasing number of businesses interested in using eProcurement systems. Titans like Microsoft have solved the costly capital dilemma, and in doing so have leveled the playing field.
Punch-Out functionality within Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition allows users to seamlessly purchase through vendors without having to store their master data and information such as item numbers, descriptions, and prices. Through the use of external, cloud-based catalogs, purchasing becomes an easier and more streamlined process for everyone involved. A BIG WIN for both large and small companies alike.
Power Up Client Satisfaction; Provide the Optimal Solution
Most of us in the workforce have been in and around technology all our lives. Maybe you loved your first computer programming class in high school or college, and maybe you didn’t. If you spent hours writing games in BASIC, “Congratulations!” You’re one of the originals, the tech lovers who probably still can’t get enough. Not sure what BASIC is? It stands for “Beginners’ All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.” Keep that in your back pocket for novelty.
Regardless, if you’ve made technology your life and livelihood, you’re probably supplying solutions for clients. If this is true, you may have heard this question, “What’s the secret to building and managing a successful development practice?” Well, no secret there; hard work, dedication, unwavering support of team members, and a clear focus to provide old-fashioned great service to customers. Of course, great service to customers means taking great care of employees. In taking care of employees, they will in turn take care of customers. Happy employees, happy customers, and happy customers drive revenue. It’s ‘the circle of life’ in consulting. Did you just sing that in your head? Then there are questions like, “Can you build me a low-code app?”, “Can you provide me with an RPA bot?”, “Can you move my application to the cloud?”, or, “Can you build me a blockchain application?”
The answer is, of course, emphatically, “YES! Yes to all.” However, contrary to a maximize-my-profit instinct, here’s where excellent customer service comes into play. “Of course we can do all those things and more, but first, let’s stop for a moment.” You see, we with a passion for technology can talk about it all day long if you let us. So why stop?
Technology is a solution to a problem, and you can’t talk about which technology until you’ve identified the correct problem needing a solution. Think Don Norman’s double diamond design process; you have to find the right problem to solve before you work on the right solution. It’s poor customer service to choose an architecture and a technology platform before we fully understand the correct problem needing to be solved, along with what makes the most sense for their unique business.
Whether a low-code solution with built-in app connectors, or more complex custom code, building an application or system needs to be in response to an actual business need. Technology is an enabler of a company’s goals. When deciding to implement any solution, customers need to ask themselves a few important questions; “Will this solution drive more revenue for my business, reduce costs, mitigate risk, create a better experience for my customers, or improve my employee’s productivity?” Once a clear problem has been identified, then and only then can we begin to discuss the architecture for a solution.
Even as low-code, plug-and-play, drag-and-drop technology replace existing methods and approaches, all while making its way across the business landscape, great customer service will never go out of style. And great customer service means asking the right questions, understanding the right problems, and providing the right solutions.
The Swiss Army Knife of Managed Services: One Tool, Many Uses
The concept behind the well-known Swiss Army Knife offers an apt analogy on the important topic of Managed Services, and whether or not you own a Swiss Army Knife, you probably still understand what they are. Now, the Swiss Army Knife as we know it was not the first multi-use pocket knife. Indeed, a similar device is referred to in Moby Dick, published way back in 1851. Still, the origin story of the Swiss Army Knife begins in the late 1880’s when the Swiss government issued a tool which came in useful when opening canned food, and more important, while disassembling/reassembling the Swiss service rifle.
As time passed, the brand came to represent an essential portable tool which came in handy in a multitude of different situations, saving time and often space. However, as the need for more tools continued to rise, pocket size and instrument size mattered. And the one-size-fits-all concept doesn’t work for many real world situations (Please See: Wenger Swiss Army 16999 Giant Knife, 87 Implements / 141 Functions for an impractical and discontinued example).
Imagine if you will, to solve this one-size-fits-all dilemma, a magical Swiss Army Knife was developed which easily and automatically adapted to the problem at hand without taking up too much time, space, and operational costs. Not only seamlessly taking ownership of the issues, but shepherding the issues through until their completion, and maintaining them beyond. This means understanding opportunities and preemptively providing solutions before there is an apparent need. This would change the world as we know it, because well, our real-world physics would be turned on its head. And who knows what would come after a physically-self-altering Swiss Army Knife? Still, there’s a connection to be made here, think of managed services as this magical Swiss Army Knife like no other.
An organization has its core business, of course. Let’s not forget about the multitude of individual operational needs within the core business. There is the internal investment needed to maintain, grow, create opportunities, and there is the outsourcing investment which ultimately frees up experts to do what they do best internally. Managed services represent the outsourcing, external investment of a range of processes and functions in order to improve operations and cut expenses.
Managed services are often configured based on needs, and the right implementation team understands what’s needed; like the magical Swiss Army Knife. Managed services can be initiated as a temporary cost-savings tool in the short run. Or, depending on the need, utilizing managed services for longer offers scalability to match an increased support model quickly, not to mention essential visibility into operations affecting the bottom line, and other impacting factors. Managed services, when executed correctly, own the environment and ecosystem of services they’re designed to provide and manage.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen to you or your company, but IT continuity or recovery after a tech disaster is greatly enhanced by using managed services, especially if IT and the like are not your core, or internal focus. You get the idea. One can only imagine the complexity of these situations, and if they're not your strong suit, utilizing managed services is certainly the way to go.
Now, of course, the magic Swiss Army Knife doesn’t exist. Just as the one-size-fits-all approach is often lacking simply based on the complex set of needs one organization can have. Still, the concept and utilization of managed services can act as that magical tool, suited to your needs, and ready to be implemented in either the short or long term. Success happens when we do what we do best, and trust others to do what they do best, all while working toward the same goal. This is what managed services do best.