SOA Development: Speeding Time to Market

This SOA development tutorial is the second half of a case study concerning the evolution of an enterprise service network at a manufactured goods enterprise. Read the first part of this SOA case study.

SOA Development to Improve Customer Satisfaction

In an effort to build a more competitive cost structure and to increase customer satisfaction, the decision was made by the manufactured goods company to engage in additional SOA development: to build an e-commerce site through which customers could browse and directly order products.

In addition, the top five percent of this company’s customers, based on order volume, would have their procurement systems directly connected to the company’s order processing system – both accelerating the ordering process and creating modest switching costs for these valued customers (though this was not highlighted for the customers).

The IT organization has leveraged the same set of Web services deployed as a result of past SOA development.. For the procurement ties, a traditional EAI (process management) solution was used to manage the order process between companies. A process in the EAI platform leverages the available order, customer and inventory Web services to execute the business process that is itself triggered by the arrival of an order message to a new Web service created in, and exposed by, the EAI platform.

To prevent future surprises, like excess inventory accumulation, a decision was made to build a set of planning and analysis applications to analyze real-time business activity. Leveraging SOA applications - the inventory, customer and order management services already created and in use by the customer service organization - the Finance, Planning and Analysis IT organization built a new system. The same services that allowed an aggressive response to an unfavorable business condition now help keep that same business condition in check.

Building and introducing this system was done in a fraction of the time and cost that would have been required without the availability of these building block Web services. And the real-time flow of critical information between these applications, required to drive this solution, was historically difficult to achieve at any cost.

Following this same pattern of innovation, systems are built, adjusted, configured and reconfigured in support of business decisions made in response to changing market conditions. The diagram below provides a snapshot of this enterprise service network after more time passes, but while it is still on the leading edge of growth.

The SOA development difference: New services and applications continue to be built, enhanced and connected across the enterprise and across enterprise boundaries.

SOA Development Model Helps Organizations Manage Change

Relative to past enterprise application architecture strategies, the ability of the IT organization to support, and even enable, changes to the operating model of the business is markedly improved.

In an SOA world, change is (relatively) easy and affordable.

Enhancing the ability to change the enterprise application landscape cost-effectively and rapidly, in support of changing business requirements, is precisely why customers are adopting the SOA approach.

For More Information

Learn more about how the SOA development model promotes adaptability. Download the free webinar, Implementing a Successful SOA Pilot Program