Informatica Perspectives

An Integration Competency Center (ICC) can save a ton of money.  You've all seen references from industry analysts singing the praises of Business Intelligence Centers of Excellence (COEs) or ICCs, but most of them are either qualitative statements or, if they have been quantified, they refer to aggregate industry numbers.  For example, here are a couple of headlines from a quick Google search: "Enterprise Business Integration Market to Reach $3.9 Billion" and "Worldwide Network Consulting and Integration Services Spending to Increase 7.8% to Reach $29.3 Million".

The question is, so what?  You probably don't care much about the industry and are more interested in what this means to you and your company.  Well now there is a way to get a more meaningful answer; the Integration Opportunity Calculator.

Access the Integration Opportunity Calculator for free.  Once you're registered and have been sent the link to access the calculator, all you need to do is enter three pieces of information about your company: 1) annual revenue, 2) industry segment, and 3) company size based on number of employees.  The calculator translates the information into an IT budget split into two areas - new initiatives and "keeping the lights on".  It then calculates how much money can be saved on each dimension of those budgets if you have an ICC.

Granted, all the calculations are based on statistical averages and include a margin of error so you can't use this as a replacement for bottom-up ROI, but nonetheless it can be very revealing since it presents a cost savings estimate that is much closer to home.  And if you already have a mature ICC in your organization (i.e. a well-defined integration strategy with a respected team that is using disciplined methods to execute the strategy) then you are already realizing the savings.

I won't spoil the surprise by telling you any more.  Just try it for your company or for other companies that you are familiar with – you'll be surprised.

If you have a reaction after trying it out, I'd love to hear your comments via this posting.