Integration

Your organization’s connective tissue

Integration is the layer that makes your systems talk to each other reliably. It’s not simply connecting A to B. It’s building a connective tissue that flows, is monitored, self-repairs, and scales.

Most organizations have integrations. The problem is that they’re fragile, opaque, and held together with duct tape. A script someone wrote three years ago that nobody understands. An FTP connection that breaks when the file format changes. A Zapier that stopped working and nobody noticed until a client complained.

What Integration does

Integration builds the connections between your systems with production-grade reliability standards: defined SLAs, continuous monitoring, automatic recovery mechanisms, and complete documentation.

Connectors with SLAs: Each integration has a defined SLA: availability, maximum latency, recovery time. It’s not a “hopefully it works.” It’s a “we guarantee it works, and if it fails, it recovers automatically within X minutes.”

Continuous monitoring: Every data flow between systems is monitored. Data volume transmitted, processing times, error rates, data consistency. We don’t wait for someone to complain to learn that an integration has failed. We know within seconds.

Resilience: Integrations fail. It’s inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is for those failures to become problems. Circuit breakers that cut the flow before a downed system drags others down. Intelligent retry logic that restarts after a transient failure. Dead letter queues that store messages that couldn’t be processed for reprocessing once the system recovers.

Event streaming: For flows that need real-time, we implement event-driven architectures. When something changes in one system, the event automatically propagates to all systems that need to know. No polling. No delays. No temporary inconsistencies.

Why it matters

Every process that crosses a boundary between systems depends on Integration. Every piece of data that needs to exist in two places passes through Integration. Every automated workflow breaks if the underlying integration fails.

Reliable integration is not a technical requirement. It’s a business requirement. When the integration between your CRM and ERP fails silently, invoices don’t get issued. When the integration between your WMS and TMS is delayed, shipments go out late. When the integration between your POS and accounting loses data, the monthly close becomes a nightmare.

Typical implementation

Integration is implemented incrementally, starting with the most critical connections identified in the Blueprint. The first integrations are usually operational within 1-2 weeks. The full catalog is built progressively, adding connectors according to the roadmap.

Each integration is documented, tested, monitored, and included in the operational runbook. The Kaizen team maintains active integrations and responds to incidents according to the defined SLA. When a vendor changes their API, we update the connector. Your team doesn’t have to worry about the plumbing.