This is an open letter to those who prepare RFx documentation for engagement platforms seeking responses from industry.

Please tell us more about the integrations you need. Help us help you!

All too often I see functional requirements in an RFx that outline, sometimes in minute detail, how something like a simple ITSM incident ticket needs to be able to be created, from multiple different viewpoints, methods and personas, and described in numerous different ways – however when I get to the integration requirements, all the document says is something along the lines of “the proposed solution must integrate with our [ERP/File repo/CRM platform/IDAM toolset]”.

Integrations are THE most complex component when it comes to delivery of an IT solution.

So that we can present artefacts to you such as estimated costs, resourcing and implementation timeline in our response, we otherwise have to guess (or more likely, take up more of your valuable time asking a series of clarification questions) about things such as your governance processes and how an integration might impact your system’s business criticality, the level of data sensitivity, cyber security risk management, integration testing requirements, and any other contextual factors that may be inherent to your organisation, or architecture.

To build those estimates, we have to consider all of the above, plus assessing any potential connectivity mechanisms between the systems and any subsequent workflow functionality we think you might need once the systems are integrated.

There is no worse feeling than writing a response to an integration requirement that simply rattles off what the standard integration capabilities of the solution I’m proposing are, along with a disclaimer that reads ‘we need to understand your requirement further to be able to provide a thorough implementation estimate’ (and then repeating it!).

Try to explain your use case(s) with some of these questions in mind:

• does the integration need to be bi-directional,
• is it a cloud-to-cloud integration, or to an on-premises system,
• what are the workflows that will be derived from the integration?

If you can, provide some detail on your level of integration governance requirements, and if known, let us know the version/release of the system that needs to be integrated. The latter of these will let us get on with the fun part of a response – digging about on product documentation websites for a solution – with a clear view of what APIs we need to research, understand and solution for, versus making (what could be very wrong) assumptions about your integration needs.

With more knowledge and greater context of your integration requirements in the hands of respondents, I guarantee that you’ll get better RFx responses from industry around those important factors such as schedule and pricing, and there’ll be less surprises (for all involved) when negotiations commence, and your chosen provider comes in to do the work.

Help us help you.