Over the last few months, we have published several articles and social media posts highlighting the value of system interoperability and the benefits to be derived from working with the right partner who can help organizations achieve their interoperability goals.
However, we haven’t yet discussed the implications of an integration service being decommissioned or discontinued and the expectations that organizations should be placing on their service providers and partners.
In Part 1 of this series, we aim to explore this topic by guiding organizations through the challenges they may face with the sudden loss of their integration service. In Part 2, we will suggest some pre-emptive solutions organizations may consider to avoid data losses, friction, and stuck points with their interoperability.
Challenges Faced
Here are some of the challenges organizations would face if their existing integration services were to be discontinued:
1. Fragmentation of Digital Spaces & Workflows
Interoperability allows for the frictionless communication of data amongst existing systems, both legacy and new. The decommissioning or interruption of system interoperability reintroduces friction and silos that organizations would have already invested significant amounts of money and time to eliminate. The resulting fragmentation would impede data flow, potentially leading to confusion and data errors, and would ultimately lead to the stifling of innovation and growth.
2. Impediment to Seamless User Experiences
A well-connected digital ecosystem allows users to seamlessly navigate between platforms, thus allowing for easy access to data and systems. The discontinuing of interoperability services could seriously impact that seamless user experience by increasing the manual labor and time investment required to keep operations moving. A poor user experience could significantly limit the potential to grow and expand service offerings, and could even result in client attrition.
3. Stifled Innovation and Competition
Interoperability is a fundamental part of innovation as a result of collaboration across platforms and leveraging the different strengths of each platform. With the discontinuation of system interoperability services, the ability to collaborate across products and systems gets severely impacted. In fact, the lack of interoperability could lead to organizations losing their competitive advantage, due to the new challenges in bringing services to the market quickly.
4. Privacy and Security Concerns
System interoperability services should maintain the highest levels of security and robust safeguards; this helps mitigate any potential data breaches and security violations, which could expose users to bad actors. The removal of interoperability services could result in an organization becoming vulnerable to hackers and cyber security threats with the new gaps in their processes and loss of security oversight.
5. Regulatory and Legal Ramifications
Interoperability between disparate systems provides the added advantage of easing some of the regulatory concerns that may arise. These systems could cover a wide breadth of functions, including completing system requirements for legal and regulatory oversight. In the event the interoperability service is discontinued, an organization may lose their regulatory compliance workflows, leaving them open to legal and regulatory scrutiny.
Conclusion
Integration services provide a number of service-critical functions for organizations, and organizations should take care to select integration service providers that can continue meeting their needs in the short, medium, and long term. Once the effort has been invested into configuring the interoperability solution, organizations can end up facing both new and recurrent issues if that solution is discontinued in the future.
In Part 2 of this series, we will discuss the solutions organizations can consider to avoid these issues in the event of integration service discontinuation.
If the challenges outlined in this article sound familiar to your organization, reach out to the Axletree team! Our integration experts would be happy to share their knowledge and help your organization develop a strategic plan to get your interoperability services back on track and better than ever. Contact us here!
April 4, 2024
