Integration front to back

"The website and intranet links directly to back office systems and ERDMS via the CRMS, so information is ‘held once, used many times’"

If transactional capabiltiy of the website is to be a reality, the website, through the CRMS, needs to interact directly with each of the relevant service-specific systems in the back offices. For example, if a customer wishes to book a squash court online, the web page for doing so needs to interact directly with the sports facility booking system - to either make (and confirm to the customer) a booking, or to advise that the facility is fully booked. Half-way houses of using the web simply to forward a message to a person to make the booking, and which leave the customer waiting to find out if their booking attempt had been successful, are simply not acceptable.

To achieve this, the web front end and the CRMS need to be linked together, and both interfaced to the back office systems. There are various ways of doing this but none is straightforward. Much can yet be done with suppliers, to require them to provide interfaces to the product ranges most widely used in the public sector.