What the Joins Actually Cost

Integration cost is treated as a one-off project expense. It is a permanent operating cost and it is measurable.

What it consists of

Building it, once.

Maintaining it through every upgrade of either end.

Running the reconciliations.

Investigating the differences.

The manual steps that compensate for what the integration does not do.

And the corrections at period end, with the time spent producing them.

Producing the number

Count manual corrections at period end for a quarter, and the hours.

Count cross-module investigations and their duration.

Count the manual steps from the register, and the time each takes per period.

Add the integration maintenance actually done in the last year.

Annualise.

Most organisations have never produced this figure and are surprised by it.

What it is for

It is the comparison for a suite. The premium a suite charges is buying away some of this, and without the number the comparison is a feeling.

It is the business case for the chain owner role, which usually costs less than the figure.

And it is the justification for integration work, which otherwise competes against features for budget and loses.

Where the cost is hidden

In payroll's month end, which is assumed to be busy.

In a manager's Thursday afternoon, which nobody counts.

In the three-week investigation that ended in a manual correction.

In recruitment, when the person who held it together leaves.

None of it appears as integration cost, which is why integration is perceived as free after go-live.

The comparison worth running

Annual cost of the current joins, produced as above.

Against the cost of fixing the worst one.

In most operations one join accounts for most of the figure, and fixing it is a discrete piece of work with a payback measured in months.

Which is a much easier proposal than a workforce management programme.

The measure over time

The same four counts, quarterly.

Falling means the joins are improving.

Flat after an expensive project means the project addressed modules rather than boundaries, which is worth knowing before the next one.

Fix the worst one first

Rather than proposing a programme.

In most operations one join accounts for most of the annual figure.

Fixing it is a discrete piece of work with a payback in months, which is a far easier proposal than a workforce management transformation.

And it produces a measured result that funds the next one, which a programme does not until it ends.

A practical configuration prompt

During configuration, use see the operational example to prompt questions about identifiers, ownership and output. Treat the page as a starting point and document each assumption.