As our recently published whitepaper, “How to articulate the value of integration,” reveals, “integration has become a key determinant of who leads and who lags in today’s global economy.” However, despite the growing focus on building a fully connected organization, many businesses struggle to achieve it, due to a lack of business and IT alignment and a clear understanding of the value better integrations create.
Value framework
To address these challenges, we introduced our value framework which breaks down value in two distinct but complementary parts: platform benefits and business outcomes. Platform benefits are the direct value creation opportunities created through better integration, while business outcomes are the indirect value creation opportunities borne as a result of it.
Each value bucket can be thought of as a causal value and a correlated value. We can use speed as an example for calculating these values:
Developers significantly improve their integration delivery speed when they reuse integration assets (APIs, templates, system connectors, code fragments), rather than recreating the same code project to project. This is the platform benefit (faster delivery speed through reuse).
As a result of delivering these integrations faster, the applications those integrations support are released to market faster, which has a positive impact on the business outcome (improved time-to-market).
Getting started with MuleSoft
MuleSoft has a Catalyst Mobilize team of experienced IT and strategy consultants that help you identify the value a better integration strategy can create for your organization. This team just published an online value calculator to get you started on your journey. With only a few inputs, you will be able to see the impact that improved project speed and reduced operations and maintenance effort can have on your organization.
Note that, while there are numerous value creation opportunities created through better integration, this value calculator only measures two (both in platform benefits):
- Improved project speed:
- What’s measured:
- Software development lifecycle (SDLC) efficiencies: running an integration SDLC from design through operations faster.
- Reusable assets: producing and consuming reusable assets across the SDLC to jumpstart any integration project.
- What’s measured:
- Reduced maintenance effort:
- What’s measured:
- Operational efficiencies: with a single pane management suite (like MuleSoft), drastically reduce “keeping the lights on” (KTLO) and change cost.
- Reusable assets: maintain secure, scalable integration assets instead of custom, duplicative, point-to-point code.
- What’s measured:
Discover the value of a better integration strategy by using the MuleSoft Value Calculator to see the impact reusable assets can have on project speed and maintenance efforts within your organization.
