A Closer Look at Integration

If you’re reading this blog, I assume you have a pretty good understanding why any kind of Enterprise system (e.g. CRM) should be integrated with Microsoft Outlook / IBM Lotus Notes. Folks who use Outlook (more than 200M people today – btw) literally live there. They start their day in Outlook and finish their day in Outlook, and the only way to involve them into usage of Enterprise systems is Outlook integration. Integration made in right way. Integration made with user’s needs in mind. Not Enterprise system needs, not developer’s needs, but user’s needs only. That is why adoption, automation and efficiency are the key words here. Really, what’s the sense in creating a super smart, productive, and efficient Enterprise system, if it is not adopted and not used at its full potential?

Just some time ago, Outlook / Lotus Notes integration need was not as evident as today. But now everyone knows why it is important and nearly every Enterprise system claims having (or building) “full bi-directional integration with Outlook/Lotus Notes”. The pitfall here however is what to call “full” and what to call “bi-directional”.

Being more than five years in business of integrating personal and enterprise environments, having a very good understanding of user needs (and sometimes dreams;-) as well as enterprise realities and challenges, we can clearly define what integration should mean:

• Full integration with Outlook is integration which does not break user’s habits within Outlook, but follows it and smartly extends the experience.
• Bi-directional integration with Outlook is integration which respects the fact that Outlook is smaller and simpler than Enterprise system and needs to be extended to be able to effectively integrate with it.

Here are just a few examples why users do not adopt Outlook integration that is done “not in the right way”:
-       My Outlook Contact is now synchronized with my ERP, but how do I associate it with the Company this Contact belongs to?
-       I’m working on some Opportunities now and communicating with my Contacts over email. How do I attach these emails in Outlook to right Opportunities in my CRM?
-       I’d like to save these email attachments to the right folder in my ECM, can I tag them when attaching?
-       I have got thousands of contacts in my ERP, but I don’t need all of them in my Outlook, How can I handle it?

A typical answer for users here is “sorry, you can only do it right in the Enterprise system.” The reality is predictable – users just skip this functionality and stop using such integration since there is not enough value for them.
So, let’s define our primary objective while dealing with any kind of Outlook/Lotus Notes integration:

• Do not change people, but change the software.
• Bring value, not overhead, for end users.

Let’s discuss how to achieve this. We’ll take CRM plus Outlook integration as an example, but let’s keep in mind that the same level of integration is applicable to any personal application with any enterprise automation in various combinations.

Since we’re going to address various aspects of the integration, below are outlined the four main objectives any team will have to deal with while integrating an Enterprise system with Microsoft Outlook (or Lotus Notes):

1. Meld existing Outlook objects (Contacts, E-mails, Tasks and Calendar items) with relevant CRM objects and extend Outlook storage to store new CRM objects (Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, any custom object), as well as work with them all in offline mode;
2. Extend Outlook/Notes UI so that new CRM objects could function as native ones;
3. Keep relational structure of data model from CRM within Outlook. Adequately link objects between each other (1:M, M:M) even though Outlook by itself does not know how to link it.
4. Respect size difference between Outlook and CRM. CRM may have millions of records, while user needs only effective subset of it in my Outlook.

All four are equally important and need to be addressed. Challenging? Yes, not an easy task, indeed. In the next post we will start discussing what potential challenges are hidden here and how to overcome them. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, check out some features of CRM to Outlook integration; your comments and questions are welcome.