Driving Optimum Results Using Integration Brokerage Agreements

The Integration Brokerage (IB) market is far from being static, and the competition is soaring high.

Sustained innovations, and changing integration requirements across Internet of Things, mobile, and cloud, are motivating the integration brokerage market to reinvent itself.

As more and more organizations plan to focus on core functions, their dependence on integration brokerage for non-core functions is intensifying.

Why are Integration Brokerage Agreements So Important?

Heavy organizational reliance on integration brokerage from providing timely and accurate information to, at times, being the most strategic partner in the organization’s most vital transactions, has made the role of an integration brokerage agreement absolutely crucial.

Examples of information flowing through integration brokerage include electronic shipment notifications, inventory availability, master data updates, and similar essential information. Such information is pertinent to the operations and profitability of your business.

In this context, establishing proper expectations with your integration brokerage provider that meet your organization's specific priorities and requirements is essential. Integration projects are highly complicated and involve mission-critical processes. Thus, it is imperative to clearly define milestones, deliverables and terms and conditions.

An integration brokerage agreement, with clearly outlined mutual expectations, is therefore a non-negotiable aspect when planning to outsource integration brokerage services. An integration brokerage agreement goes way beyond a mere documentation, and its role in driving optimum results for your business is astonishing. 

What to Consider when Signing an Integration Brokerage Agreement?

Prior to signing an integration brokerage agreement or signing a renewal, ensure that you have considered the following tips regarding Service-Level Agreements (SLAs), Disaster Recovery (DR) and Intellectual property (IP), to drive optimum results in your business. Here’s how:

Service-Level Agreements: When preparing for integration brokerage, identify and evaluate the business processes that will transition to the integration broker. Create or strengthen your contract by defining clear-cut SLAs. While drafting your integration brokerage agreement, you must discuss with your IB provider the one-time as well as recurring service deliverables such as transformation map methodology, multinational project considerations, network and application availability, support model and problem escalation, etc. You must check with your IB provider if your expectations are realistic and viable. 

Disaster Recovery: To minimize the impact of unexpected disasters, most IB providers switch their IB operations from one datacenter to another. While this is a good practice, watch out for the primary and secondary sites, the capability of the secondary site, the defined time to recover and the recovery points. Ensure that your agreement and SLAs together cover all these points. The integration brokerage agreement must comprehensively answer if the failover and recovery objectives apply to all of the components of your IB solution or not. 

Intellectual Property: Consider the IP created during the lifetime of your IB project. The integration brokerage agreement needs to throw light on what happens to the IP at the end of the relationship. Define what data is owned by whom, who is the custodian, who disposes of the information, how is it disposed, when is it disposed, can any information be ported in or out, etc.

To sum it up, when beginning a relationship with an IB vendor, discuss expectations and create an agreement that keeps things transparent and healthy in the long run.