Improving Business Flexibility through Application Integration
Application Integration Chapter 1 – 12/15/04


The lack of integration of Global Industrial Corporation’s IT systems was 
hampering the company’s ability to compete effectively and meet the 
evolving needs of its customers.  For years, the manufacturing giant had 
invested millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours in computer 
applications and systems.  GIC had deployed a broad spectrum of state 
of the art software applications.  And when it couldn’t find the right 
application, the company built its own using COBOL, Java or .NET 
programming models.

As a result of several recent acquisitions, the company had inherited 
multiple HR, CRM and ERP systems that seriously duplicated each other’s 
efforts.  GIC found it was spending 40% of its IT budget building and 
maintaining the custom code that connected these various applications 
and systems.  This resulted in inflexible application connections that 
impacted the company’s ability to respond quickly to changes in the 
market. 

GIC’s customer satisfaction was falling because a growing number of 
orders were delayed, lost or duplicated due to application integration 
problems.  The company needed to expand its use of the Web and better 
integrate its supply chain, but was finding it difficult to focus on these new 
initiatives when it consistently missed orders due to systems that were not 
able to communicate with each other.

GIC knew that it had to find an effective way of integrating these 
disparate applications, while also laying the groundwork for the 
standardization that would be necessary for efficient growth in the future. 
It was also clear that the chosen approach would need to support a 
service oriented architecture that would soon be central to the 
company’s integration strategy - for integration both inside and outside 
the walls of the company. 

GIC decided on a solution that allowed it to integrate its existing 
applications and systems, while also giving it the flexibility to swiftly 
implement new integration projects in the future. The company “future-
proofed” its application integration by providing for an incremental 
migration strategy to a Web services architecture that would allow it to 
create standardized, reusable interfaces to many of its applications. 

Since it has implemented its new solution, GIC’s business applications can 
now be integrated and reconfigured in a matter of days, rather than 
months or years, and GIC has put itself in a position to quickly respond to 
new business opportunities and challenges.

Customer satisfaction levels are up as GIC’s IT systems can now reliably 
pass orders between applications.  The company’s entire value chain – 
suppliers, partners, employees and customers – can now obtain real-time 
business information quickly and accurately.

By eliminating processing errors and leveraging existing assets in new ways, 
GIC has been able to improve operational performance while at the 
same time reducing cost.