Long Days, Short Years

Parent systems, child systems and the data we integrate between them

There is an old saying that the experience of parenting is a series of long days of diaper changing, and feeding, and crying and cleaning… that somehow amass into an anthology of short years, where all of a sudden the kids are out of the nest and you cannot comprehend where the time has gone. In a strange way, system integrations are very, very similar.

Oftentimes, as parents, we find ourselves barking short commands to our children:

                    "DON'T TOUCH!"

                                        "DON'T DRINK THE BATHWATER!"

                                                           "STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER!"

                                                                       "PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON!"

In reality, over time we realize that there are a few important lessons and principles that we need to explain to our children, in their entirety, in a way that they can understand. System integrations behave the same way. I have seen many organizations integrate all records of a data set between their systems; whether that be users, vendors, contracts or GL accounts. However, within each record, there is not much substance. Users are missing their departments, vendors are missing email or phone numbers, invoices are missing PO or contract numbers, and the list goes on and on. Like the experienced parent described above, the two most important aspects of an effective integration are its inclusion criteria and the completeness of data within each record.

Inclusion Criteria

Ensure that whatever information is flowing from one system to another is relevant to the recipient. Ask yourself, do purchasing contracts need to be loaded into a CRM system? Does every employee need a license in our T&E application? Does every vendor we have paid over the past five years belong in the accounts payable platform? The answer will differ for every organization and for every application, but flooding a system with irrelevant information will simply cloud the picture and divert attention away from the important data that our stakeholders need. "Keeping the main thing the main thing" is the crux of both a reliable inclusion criteria and a distraction-free trip to the grocery store.

Data Completeness

Now, once you have decided to include a vendor in your AP platform, do everything in your power to populate every field and value on that record that does not violate PII, HIPAA or any other compliance requirements you have to adhere to. There is nothing more valuable in any business application than having every data point on a person, company or object at your fingertips. There is only so long that "Because I said so" is accepted by our children as a sufficient explanation for our instructions. But as annoying as a repetitive stream of "Why?" can be; we parents quickly learn that providing context to the commands we give our children significantly reduces the amount of back and forth we have to endure later in the day. A complete record eliminates lots of questions about readily available information, but more importantly, incomplete data is the nextdoor neighbour to duplicative licenses in multiple systems. If I can find everything I need to know about an invoice, or vendor, or an expense report in one system, I don't need access to it in another one.

For my final analogy, there are times when parents need an intermediary to step in - whether an older sibling, an aunt, a coach or teacher - to share an important message that for whatever reason, they cannot deliver in a way that resonates with their child. There are myriad middleware solutions available today that can help to interpret, transform and retransmit data from one system to the next in a way that a direct sFTP or API connection cannot.

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