Business Hub with Open Source software (Part 2)

In the previous blog we made the case for a business hub for your association (if you haven’t read it, please do). In this blog we will go over implementing the hub with free open source software.

To recap the point we are trying to make, is that associations are moving from monolithic IT platforms to multiple best of breed systems – CRM, LMS, CMS, Community etc. That creates a need to integrate these systems so that they can “talk” to each other. Currently, this is being done on an ad-hoc basis where vendor systems are creating direct links to each other. This creates a “tight coupling” and makes it difficult to swap out systems in the future.  It also fragments your organizations data, and business processes across many different platforms.

The Business Hub we envision

The need to centralize all the data across your enterprise is important for the following reasons

Every IT system models data differently. Salesforce has Contacts, netFORUM calls them Individual and so on. But why should you depend on vendors definition of your associations data?  That causes several issues

• Staff has to learn different terminologies, which is different from how you conduct your business.
• All system to system Integrations have to do data translations.
• Makes pan organization reports and BI dashboard difficult to implement.

This also means when you move your CRM/LMS/CMS, you now have to learn a new data model, re-create your reports, retrain your staff and so on.

In the hub, we will create a “Common Data Model” that most accurately represents data as your association sees it.  This will endure across current and future IT systems.

The problem of multiple IT systems may be new to associations, but its been around for a while in large enterprises (think a large Bank with branches all over the world). Enterprises have used what is know as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to implement this middleware tier.  ESB’s provide dozens of “connectors” and “data translators” that can communicate with a wide variety of platforms and protocols.

As we begin to implement this stack for some of our clients, we will add further posts on the topic. We will also contribute our Common Data Model to ASAE. If there is a consensus on what a universal association data model will look like, it will go a long way in standardizing data across vendor systems.