Have you ever had a variation of the following B2B data integration conversation with your IT department?
Me: I want to somehow integrate the data in my marketing automation software with the data in XYZ company’s marketing automation software. Can you give them API access to our marketing automation application?
IT: No. Once they have this access, they can pull data out of our application anytime they want.
Me: Okay. What do you suggest?
IT: We can create a secure FTP server for you to use to exchange data.
Me: Fine. Whatever. I don’t care how it’s done, I just want my highly paid staff member to stop spending her time manually uploading CSV files from XYZ company into my marketing automation software.
IT: Great. We’ll reach out to XYZ company’s IT department and create a plan. This should take us about 8 weeks…3 months at the most.
Me: WHAT?! I don’t have that long…I need to jumpstart this process NOW. Why does it take so long to set up a connection?!
If this sounds familiar, I’ve got the answer for you. In short, what IT is doing in the above conversation is not actually B2B integration. What they’re doing is creating a workaround that will allow two companies to exchange data securely. The REASON it takes so long is that when two companies decide to set up a data connection, they have to get two IT departments together and agree on a number of things.
- 1.Subject of the data – this is the WHAT question. What data are they exchanging? Is it inventory data? Health data? Financial data? Shipping notices?
- 2.Data format. This specifies the type of data each company accepts. Will it be an Excel file? A CSV file? An XML file?
- 3.Data fields. Maybe company A sets up their fields in their application a different way than company B does. What fields are mandatory? Which ones are optional? The more complex the fields, the more questions have to go back and forth…for example, what if company A wants to send company B Excel spreadsheets with data in multiple tabs?
- 4.Data transport. How will the data be transported from company A to B? Via FTP? A web service? Email?
- 5.Data consumption. Who’s in charge of receiving the files? Should they send an acknowledgement or confirmation? To whom should they send the acknowledgement?
- 6.Error handling. What happens if the file sent was incorrect and contained errors? Who should be notified on both sides? Who is going to handle these errors and how? How quickly can these errors be fixed and the file resubmitted? How do you prevent incorrect updates in the target application in the case of out-of-sequence resubmission of data?
It’s not that each of these items is particularly complicated, or can’t be addressed in a series of back-and-forth emails or one very long (and boring, I imagine) meeting. It’s that your IT department has other tasks to accomplish – new business applications to write, other applications within the company to integrate, trouble tickets to address, infrastructure to manage, disaster recovery plans to create, and other business users to support (among others). If you add the workload of your own over-stretched IT department to that of XYZ company’s, then getting them together in one shot to address the above 6 items can be as tricky as winning the lottery.
The way B2B integration has been done is almost as old as your mother’s 70’s disco outfit. That’s why B2B integration is an industry ripe for upending, and that’s just what we’re doing at Adeptia. And that’s also why I’m so excited to have joined as our VP of Marketing. I’m curious…have you had a similar challenge at your company? If so, tell me in a comment below.