Today’s businesses, regardless of industry, are dependent on technology. From Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to back-office systems like accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), companies rely on technology to keep them up and running well.

These individual systems house a wealth of data, including customer information and demographics, sales and production data, personnel data, inventory numbers, and so on. As crucial as this data is to the parts of the business that house it, it can also be important to other areas of the company as well. Accessing information across systems can be done timely and efficiently through system integrations.

What is Systems Integration?

While there are many different ways to implement, system integration – sometimes called data integration – is building connections between previously disconnected systems so that they can share data. Instead of asking for an export of information from one system to import into another, or manually entering data in multiple places, systems integration allows the data to flow or be available between systems.

The value to the business behind this simple concept is extensive, as discussed below. In short, it removes silos between departments and increases a company’s ability to make data-driven decisions.

Integrations allow you to pull data from one system to another, or query one system for data that is stored in another. For systems that need up to date information at a moment’s notice, real-time integrations can be created that allow the connected systems to share information. Other processes may need data updated only periodically (daily, hourly, and etc.), but the updates need to happen automatically, as a scheduled “batch” of data.

How Businesses Use Systems Integration

There are as many use cases for systems integrations as there are companies. These are just a few examples.

Sales integrations- In a traditional sales process, a sales team member accepts an order, perhaps on an order form. That order form has important data for multiple systems. Accounting needs the information so that billing can occur. The warehouse or shipping department needs to know what’s contained in the order. Payroll may need the information to issue a commission check. And the salesperson will want to record the customer data in their book of sales. With a systems integration, the salesperson would be able to enter data once and have the data flow out to each of the divisions with an interest in the order.

Customer service – When customers ask for assistance on their account, they expect the agent they are speaking with to have all their important information available. But if customer data exists in a CRM, while purchase data is only located in the order system, a customer service agent will be slow in getting the customer the help they need.

Financial Reporting – When the finance team is asked to create a report on the financial health of the business for the CEO, it can be a time-consuming task. Pulling together budget data and actuals from various departments, comparing that with balance sheets and against projects, can take days. For many companies, it’s also a manual process, opening it up to mistakes as spreadsheets are copied from one place to another. An integration simplifies the reporting process while also preserving data integrity.

The Pros and Cons of Integrating Your Business Systems

From just the few examples above, you begin to get a picture of the benefits system integration can have on your business. These benefits include:

Improved and accelerated process flow: When systems that are dependent on information from a single source can receive that data automatically, there is no delay in multiple processes being kicked off.

Better customer experience: With a broader view of both a customer, their interactions, and their purchases, employees are better able to help resolve issues, anticipate needs, and provide solutions.

Better collaboration: When data is shared across the company instead of being siloed in a single system, departments can work together more easily because they are working against the same set of data.

Faster and better decision making: With accurate data available from multiple sources, leaders in an organization have a holistic view across the business. Reporting is not only more accurate, but leaders can more easily see how a factor in one department impacts another.

Systems integration sounds like a win-win for everyone, and in general, it is. However, there are a few downsides if a company isn’t careful with its implementation.

Data integrity can be a problem if an integration isn’t planned well. Some integrations will require one system to be declared the “system of record”. This system will be considered the source of truth for the data.

It’s also crucial to define who can read and write data to the various systems. For instance, you won’t want an outlying system to be able to change accounting data, even if it needs to be able to read it. Access control is another area that should be well planned during an integration project.

Security should always be a concern when sharing data. If a hacker gains access to one system, a poorly implemented integration may grant them access to every other system connected to it.

Because of these concerns, companies looking to integrate their systems should find a reliable and experienced partner, like SunNet, to help them gain the benefits while mitigating the risks. For more information on how SunNet can help you with your system integrations, contact us.

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Contact us if you have any questions.

Companies face regulations and laws on all sides. External entities want companies to prove they are protecting customers and the world around them to a set of defined standards. Internal employees want the organization to show they take their employment and the working environment seriously. And still other businesses must adhere to strict regulations imposed because of the industries they work in.

To address these various concerns, companies set up a system of rules and governances to ensure that the organization’s values and commitments to legal and regulatory standards are met. Known as compliance management, this system is important to keeping companies on the right side of laws and regulations. Compliance management systems and applications go one step further, offering businesses a place for logging activities and holding data for reviews and audits.

What is Compliance Management, and Why Have It?

Corporate compliance is fairly straightforward – it’s the process your company follows to ensure that laws, standards, regulations, and the ethics of your company are well defined and followed. An organization’s compliance may include governmental requirements, internal policies and rules, or both.

For companies that must follow defined regulations because of their industry or the industries they work with, compliance management is a system for training, managing, and tracking your adherence to those rules. If a question should arise, an organization can show that employees are aware of the regulations and rules and what has been put in place to ensure those rules are being followed.

Internal compliance also calls for a system of training, tracking, and management. It ensures that internal processes are in place for employees to follow, and includes everything from data security to employee actions.

In either case, actions are defined and tracked. Obviously, this is important should a question ever arise around how a company follows laws and regulations for auditors. It also provides support should an organization need to prove they are diligent in court.

Beyond that, compliance management is a proactive means of preventing problems. It ensures that everyone in the company, from the board on down, understands the role that they play in regulations and upholding a company’s values.

How Technology Plays Into Compliance

Technology has its own part to play in corporate compliance and compliance management. IT departments have their own set of rules that they must follow, while at the same time, technology provides a means to more easily track and manage compliance activities across the organization. A compliance management systems and tools keep both the larger organization and IT teams on the right track for following the organization’s rules and regulations.

Compliance activities in IT generally revolve around data storage and safety. And that makes a lot of sense. Data – business data, customer data, financial data – is the core of any business, and IT bears the responsibility of being the caretaker of that information.

For example, while an entire organization involved in healthcare must understand and follow HIPPA rules, IT has the special responsibility of defining processes to protect patient data at rest and in transit. Compliance standards must be defined and well understood around how data is stored, data security, data access, and data management.

For corporate technology, those rules can go beyond the data IT has direct control over and extend to the activities taken by the rest of the organization utilizing technology. For instance, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act – or SOX – requires that publicly traded companies retain certain documents, including emails. IT is responsible for setting up systems and policies to retain those documents and emails.

Obviously, keeping track of things like document storage and management procedures or auditing role-based system access can be cumbersome in a spreadsheet. Add in tracking and management for compliance activities beyond that – from training to internal audit documentation – and it’s easy to see why many organizations turn to compliance tools that support an entire compliance management system.

Technology tools for compliance management don’t need to add work to your organization’s IT group. Cloud-based compliance tools exist that can help corporate compliance teams document, store, record, audit, and provide proof of activities easily and quickly.

Marrying a compliance management program and system with appropriate technology tools can protect your organization from lawsuits, and even from distracting “fire drills” when proof of compliance activities are requested or required. Audits- both internal and external – become easier and the true spirit of these rules and regulations can be realized, protecting customers, employees, investors, and the organization as a whole.

If you are interested in finding out more about compliance management in your organization, SunNet’s experts are available for a free consultation.

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We now live in an age where technology exists everywhere and our world has rapidly changed with it. New innovations are created every day to make our lives easier. The education industry is no exception. Technology is being used to enhance education, especially children’s education, to track their development and help progress their development. In this article, we will explore some of the digital transformation technologies, including intelligent online assessment and reporting, to demonstrate the potential impacts it can have when it complements their outlined processes. Furthermore, how it effectively increases the quality of education by monitoring, guiding, self-learning, and improving.

Monitoring students’ developmental progress, teachers’ performance, and school environments.Through online assessments, users can create different types of electronic exams to assess students. The exams results are kept within the application for teachers, students, school, and parents to conveniently access at any time. They simply search for the exam and the students’ name to look up specific results, rather than sifting through piles of paper for just one student. It performs such tasks on a very detailed level for all multiple classes or subjects. Furthermore, one can also have the ability to design online assessments to perform evaluations on teachers, as well as the school’s learning environments and facilities’ safety.

Provides “smart” guidance based on the assessments’ results.Taking the assessment function even further, after collecting the results, the application can even allow teachers and parents to pick out sets of specific exercises that focus on the areas in which the students are struggling in. It sets a standard for teachers to become aware of any extra attention their students may need, thus help guide their teaching efforts. Schools can also be evaluated. It can provide a list of activities to improve the areas that scored below satisfactory in their assessments. With digital transformation, student, teachers, and schools can easily be monitored, tracked, and guided toward improvements.

Provides “smart” guidance based on the assessments’ results. Taking the assessment function even further, after collecting the results, the application can even allow teachers and parents to pick out sets of specific exercises that focus on the areas in which the students are struggling in. It sets a standard for teachers to become aware of any extra attention their students may need, thus help guide their teaching efforts. Schools can also be evaluated. It can provide a list of activities to improve the areas that scored below satisfactory in their assessments. With digital transformation, student, teachers, and schools can easily be monitored, tracked, and guided toward improvements.

A report function is necessary in almost every software application nowadays. It is also important to have the capability to customize any report to fit your various needs. While reports can help a teacher track the entire class’s for the big picture it could also be extremely beneficial to track each individual’s progress as mentioned above. Reports can help schools have an overview of teachers, classes, and even different location and branches and compare the results.

Data analysis is crucial for self-learning and improvement. The ultimate goal is to help students, teachers, and schools learn from their assessment results and provide meaningful suggestions to refine or improve their existing processes. Making these corrective changes help education providers and researchers in the long run by increasing efficiency and feedback. This is a critical piece of the digital transformation mission. People often underestimate the value of their statistical data and leave it alone, only saving it solely for audit purposes. In truth, this data is one of the most valuable information for education providers wanting to build their organizational programs and enhance their long-term business growth. Without doing so, there is a huge missing piece in the puzzle and the cycle will never reach its full potential.

This is just one particular illustration of how an industry can use technology to support and improve education improvement and management process. You can subscribe our newsletter, we will share more important information about Education’s Digital Transformation in the near future.

About SUNNET

SUNNET is a custom software design company with 18 years of experience under our belt. We specialize in health care and education domains. Many well-known organizations have completed their digital transformation with SUNNET and achieved great success in their real practice and growth.