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// FEATURE // through classic integration , wherein systems sharing the same data structure are able to use one database . However , it is highly unlikely that modern systems will share this data structure unless they all come from the same supplier , which is prohibitively costly and restrictive for the needs of many businesses .
Simon Kearsley , CEO of bluQube
This benefit can be illustrated through a realworld example pertinent for this time of year . Specifically , Further Education ( FE ) institutions see a major spike in workload in the Autumn as they must manage student enrolments for the new academic year .
In our experience working with numerous FE partners , each annual enrolment might mean anything from 20,000 – 40,000 new students ; all of whom must be entered into the institution ’ s myriad systems individually . In the past , this would need to be done in each individual system , taking dozens of hours and leaving significant potential for human error . With interoperability , staff would only need to enter the information once and it would automatically update in all other systems , saving significant time and reducing the risk of error .
More generally , by freeing up staff time from countless hours of monotonous data entry , interoperable systems can also make day-today roles of many within the business , such as finance teams simultaneously more fulfilling for those who perform them and more productive for the businesses they service .
By essentially automating onerous , repetitive tasks like re-keying , interoperability frees up significant staff resources that can be reallocated towards more interesting , strategic work that has a real impact on the company ' s bottom line and long-term prospects .
Identifying the business pain points solved by interoperability
Before interoperability , the de facto standard for integrating multiple software systems was
Importantly , interoperability means that organisations are not restricted to purchasing their suite of software products from the same supplier to ensure they can work in sync , as is all too often the case with integrated systems . Modern , interoperable web services allow information to be shared between systems regardless of provider .
On top of the evident financial benefits of being able to shop around , rather than being tied to any one provider , logistically it is virtually unfeasible to expect one supplier to effectively meet the needs of each and every department within a business , which often have countless IT systems in operation . Interoperability elegantly sidesteps this challenge , allowing companies to pick and choose software that best fits the need of each specific department , users and set of organisational objectives .
Looking also at the process of manual data entry , which is ubiquitous across virtually every business in some form or other , we must consider the unavoidable potential for human error – a recurrent pain point . With the best will in the world , no human employee consigned to hours of repetitive data entry is immune to an unintentional mistake in a document from time to time , which can have potentially-major ramifications for a business if these errors should go unnoticed .
For example , a stray decimal place in a profit and loss document can mean thousands in missing revenues , which then require further resources to investigate and correct . Interoperability again solves this issue by significantly cutting down on the levels of data entry required , minimising the potential for mistakes .
Finally , another critical pain point alleviated by interoperable software is disaster recovery . Namely , if an integrated system should suffer an issue , outage or external threat such as a cyberattack , businesses run
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