News: Articles
Integrating SERVICEPower into
your service organization
By Dave Goodwin
Senior Technical Consultant, ServicePower Business Solutions
The progress of commercial computing, from its early days
of batch processed number crunching applications, such as payroll
processing, to its all pervasive role in organisations today,
has been accompanied by an explosion in the breadth and depth
of functionality which computerised systems must provide. IT
systems are now used by almost all employees in large enterprises,
and form an integral part of business processes and process
re-engineering.
Given this, even the modern, comprehensive software packages,
such as ERP or CRM systems, cannot normally provide all the
functionality an organisation needs. This is perhaps particularly
true for field service organisations, partly because although
ERP and CRM systems have now broadened into the service field,
their origins lie elsewhere; ERP originated in manufacturing
and CRM as an automated sales force management tool. Whether
it is to supplement the breadth of functionality, or the depth
in a specialist area, the modern service enterprise typically
relies on a variety of different and quite separate software
applications, each of which will process its own set of tasks
and organise its own data.
The degree to which this has progressed is such that, today,
integrating these disparate applications efficiently and seamlessly
to provide a high quality total system has become a central,
business critical activity. The phrase ‘high quality’
here clearly implies those critical measures which determine
the effectiveness of the system in use. Equally important, however,
though perhaps less visible, are those driving the ease with
which the integrated system of co-operating applications can
be developed and maintained. Both of these quality aspects are
central drivers governing the level of business benefit and
return on investment that the system will deliver.
It is therefore essential that any software package designed
for use in co-operating systems provides high quality interfaces,
which facilitate the development of a well-designed integrated
solution. Equally important in ensuring a successful integration
is that the enterprise implementing an integrated system plans
from an early stage in the project, the business processes that
must accompany the system in use, and the data flows it will
need to support.
As a system for scheduling field engineers, SERVICEPower
is designed to be integrated with front end host systems such
as ERP systems or Service Management Systems (SMSs) which provide
a portal onto a wide range of business support functions, but
which cannot themselves provide a scheduling capability or are
unable to match the quality and range of scheduling functionality
which SERVICEPower can provide, and
which a modern service enterprise needs.
SERVICEPower is therefore specifically
targeted for use in co-operating systems. In response to this,
an integration module supporting interfacing at a technical
level and a structured implementation approach to supplement
this and to help the enterprise formulate the business processes
and data flows, on which the integrated system will rely, accompanies
SERVICEPower.
When designing the integration of a host system with a specialist
support system such as a scheduling package, there are three
related, but distinct, areas that need to be considered:
-
The way in which the facilities of the scheduling
system are to be used to support key business process and
to achieve key business goals
-
The sourcing from within the host system,
of the information required by the scheduling system to achieve
these business goals
-
The physical nature of the interfaces between
component systems and the manner in which information is to
be passed between the two systems
The issues implied by the above can impact both the ease of the
integration process as well as the quality of the final integrated
system. Addressing issues in all of these areas is, therefore, key
to a successful project outcome.
Addressing the first two of these areas requires a structured implementation
approach, whereas the latter demands standardised, well-designed
interfaces and components.
SERVICEPower implementations are supported
by a comprehensive and well-tried implementation process whose objective
is to help the customer’s enterprise maximise the business
return on its investment in SERVICEPower
in the shortest possible time scale.
The implementation approach includes workshops and processes covering
both technical and business oriented aspects of the integration.
Wherever appropriate, these are supported by parallel streams of
activity. This approach reduces implementation time scales while
taking advantage of the synergies obtained from the simultaneous
development of ideas over all aspects of the project. The workshops
cover key areas, and these are the drivers for on-going processes,
which develop and refine the ideas generated in the workshops.
The main business workshops cover Business Process and Business
Mapping. The latter is central to the implementation process as
it takes advantage of SERVICEPower’s
capability to be tailored to match a customer’s business drivers.
The Business Mapping process allows each customer of SERVICEPower
to benefit from a comprehensive scheduling capability based on a
standard product—but with an implementation tailored to that
customer’s specific business needs.
The main workshops on the technical stream are the Interface Workshop
and the Technical Workshop. These consider how the interface to
SERVICEPower will be developed and how
SERVICEPower will fit in architecturally
and be administered to support the business requirements given at
the start of the project and refined by the business workshops.
However essential the use of a structured approach may be in ensuring
a successful integration, it is insufficient on its own and will
not achieve its objectives without the support of an easy to use,
well designed interface.
The SERVICEPower interface module provides
a standard interface to host systems, which obeys the key principles
of structured design, those of loose coupling and high cohesion.
These are well-established design pillars for software packages
targeted for use in co-operative systems. Loose coupling implies
weak package-to-package inter-dependency, while high cohesion implies
that each transaction performs a discrete function. Following these
design principles minimises the development and maintenance effort
of integrated systems. Most importantly, they support the development
of a coherent integrated system, within which each package can exhibit
the independent performance needed to maximise the effectiveness
of its contribution to the total system’s goals.
The provision of an independent interface in a standard form keeps
the physical process of integration in ‘the main stream’.
This is important to allow the flexibility, which must be provided
by any software module, designed to work co-operatively with a wide
variety of other systems and so support their driver’s integration
routes.
The standard interfaces supported by SERVICEPower
have enabled it to be successfully integrated to a wide range of
host systems, via a variety Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms;
these systems include the market leading SMS systems as well as
other systems, such as Web based applications, Microsoft Outlook
and mobile communications systems. The SERVICEPower
interface module has formed the basis of certified integrations
of SERVICEPower with leading SMS systems.
The SERVICEPower interface module can
be invoked via a number of programming languages and calling standards.
Examples of those, which have been used by host systems integrated
to SERVICEPower, include C, Visual Basic,
VBA, Java, SOAP/XML and Perl.
Access to the SERVICEPower integration
module can be via IPC mechanisms appropriate to the host system.
Hosts have successfully integrated to SERVICEPower
by methods including, direct call, via COM objects, via Remote Function
Call (RFC) or via database stored procedures.
The SERVICEPower integration module is
thread-safe, can be located remotely from the SERVICEPower
server machine and multiple-instances of the module can simultaneously
access the same SERVICEPower server. These
properties enable it to occupy a variety of locations in the overall
system architecture. Examples of this from actual implementations
include:
- Co-locating the module from each client of the host system
- Co-locating the module with a central server component of the
host system
- Calling the module via a Web server
- Calling the module via Microsoft Transaction Server
In summary, the integration of components into a total system, while
certainly presenting its challenges, can be achieved successfully
and deliver significant business benefit, if approached in the correct
way. Use of a structured implementation approach and well-designed
components, such as are provided by SERVICEPower,
are central to ensuring this success.
About the Author
Dave Goodwin is a Senior Technical Consultant with ServicePower
Business Solutions, based in Stockport, England. He can be reached
at d.Goodwin@servicepower.com
For more information about ServicePower or our products, visit
the Web site at www.servicepower.com
or call us in the U.S. on +1 (410) 571 6333, or in the UK on +44(0)161
476 2277
|
