Top 10 Points to Consider in a Business Integration Vendor

TOP 10 POINTS TO CONSIDER IN A
BUSINESS INTEGRATION VENDOR
Business integration provides you with two primary things: real-time access to business information, and the insight needed to manage all of your critical processes. With business integration you see how business processes are webMethods has more performing, predict what might happen in the future and adjust those than 1,250 customers processes rapidly to address the changes faced by your business. Using worldwide, including business integration you can create new applications across your enterprise Global 2000 leaders and realize significant increases in business process productivity. such as Wells Fargo, A complete business integration platform will help harness your IT assets and Apple, Eastman construct the complex business processes that drive your enterprise. Selecting Chemical Company, and deploying the right integration solution will give your company a key
International Paper, competitive differentiator, increase revenues, reduce costs, and help you deliver the best service to your customers. Office Depot, Henkel KG&A, American In short, with business integration you can realize the full value of your IT
Electric Power (AEP) investments and have a direct impact on your enterprise.
and Applied Materials. What to Look for in an Integration Vendor Selecting the right business integration vendor is a challenge. The number of vendors promising a comprehensive and unified integration solution grows daily, as does the variety of approaches to solving the integration problem. While it is essential to focus on what is critical for your company, it is also important to evaluate vendors using a common set of metrics. This document uses customer feedback taken from a broad portfolio of evaluations to offer key factors and considerations to use when selecting an integration software vendor: ƒ Track record of customer success ƒ Proven corporate strength ƒ Speed of implementation ƒ Manageability ƒ Independence ƒ Mature architecture ƒ Completeness ƒ Scalability ƒ Strong partner network 3877 Fairfax Ridge Road ƒ Coherent product strategy Fairfax, VA 22030 USA www.webmethods.com
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1. Customer Success The most important consideration is this: has the vendor made companies similar to yours successful? What is the vendor's track record, how do they treat customers, and how do their customers view them?
Why is this important? ƒ References. This is the biggest indicator of customer success. Talk to some of the current customers using the product and find out what they "We're very pleased have to say about the vendor's contributions to their success. Be sure to with webMethods' determine that the reference has placed integrations into production. solutions, and are ƒ Methodology and best practices. Ask the direct question: "How will you equally impressed with make me successful with your product?" Consider the answer carefully. the company's intelligent Look for a proven methodology to help you architect your integration solution that not only gets you into production quickly, but also enables and innovative approach you to stay in production as your enterprise integration needs change. to partnerships. webMethods has been a ƒ Strong professional services, training and technical customer support. It is very important to select a vendor that provides you with mentoring, strong advocate for training, and "lighthouse" services that allow you to be self-sufficient in Motorola's success from your implementation. Evaluate the quality of the customer support the beginning, and has offerings and look for high customer satisfaction levels taken from been integrally involved independent surveys. from design and ƒ Look for how actively the vendor solicits customer feedback to the planning, down to the future of the product. Determine how the vendor will address your flawless execution. The future requirements and how the vendor will incorporate customer technical conversations feedback into the future product roadmap. between our two
Why webMethods? companies have borne innovative technology ƒ Production events. webMethods is the only vendor to report publicly the number of projects that go live, a figure that now exceeds 160 solutions that drive value projects a quarter. This means that more than one com... [download for more]