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When someone
chooses to integrate there is always the wrong way and the right way to go
about this. Just because you chose to integrate does not mean you did a
fantastic job about it.
One such
example I came across recently was a nameless organisation decided to integrate
their systems, they provided a very good level of integration and it was all
working fine, then they got over zealous, a contractor they hired thought hey I
can do integration also, the company not knowing any wiser said ok sure let’s
do it. 
The
integration was a simple one, I’d like to change my surname, and it should
update all the systems, because I am married now and have taken my husband’s
name by choice. 
The old way
of doing this was very manual and very cumbersome and took a long time to
implement.
We already
provided integration of other user profile details, which were updated in the
various systems in the organisation. The contractor thought hey I can do it too 
The surname request
update had a fancy front end, when the user submitted this, their request was
sent as an email to someone in HR who would manually make the changes required
in the system
What is
worse, is that the email got it wrong, it said update my first name to this
name, and not my surname, so the person in HR went and updated their first name
to their new surname  This person was
outsourced from the organisation. 
This had
flow on effects, that had not been thought of, when someone changes their name,
their AD name needs to update, their email address needs to change, and a whole
bunch of other systems need to be informed. 
To get
around this they just deleted the user and made a new one as if they had just
joined the organisation, the flow on was very very bad 
All of their
access gone, all of their email gone, their permissions to all the internal
systems gone, this would have happened even if they had changed their surname. 
The loss of
productivity for this person was about two weeks’ worth, the person was not a
low level admin, they were senior and on a good rate. 
Take this against
the decision to use a contractor who said yeah we can do it,  probably $1000 for the efforts, then add the
down time of the one employee, $20000 in loss of productivity and in ability to
work, you are not only paying for them to work but they can’t work and produce income
for the organisation. Now multiply this by a low estimate of 5 people who may
have been effected by this across an organisation of 7000 people  
You have a
net loss to the organisation of: $100,000 
plus your low cost of implementing this in the first place.  
Take this
vs, doing it correctly in the first place, taking the time to understand the
impact, going and updating the various systems, in near real time, and ensuring
that the user was good to go within 15 minutes. 
A cost
estimate for this would be somewhere between  $20,000 to $60,000. Had more than 5 people
requested this change, think of the cost to the organisation.
It becomes
very clear that you need to integrate, and you need to do it properly. You need
to have the right people working with you who understand this and are able to
see these issues well before they happen. 
Never believe
someone who says yeah we can do that, no problem, it is easy, we will just
email someone, or we will add a manual step, or we will just leverage the
existing process or method, or we will just delete them and put them back
these things make me cringe don’t do it ever! 
Talk to the
professionals, they have done it all before.