Looking across companies who are either piloting or actively pursuing Service-Oriented Architecture frameworks to support their business strategies, more and more of them are aimed at accentuating, strengthening, and making more efficient selling and service strategies. Cost reductions surrounding database and data warehouse consolidations, reducing integration costs by getting out of hand-built adapter hell, and getting pricing, configuration, quoting, and service data to sales reps when they need it are also key goals of their strategies. Yet the vision that the CIOs I’ve spoken with is this: they want all relevant data for a customer on the screens of sales and service reps so intelligent decisions can be made quickly on margins, pricing, cross-selling, and up-selling. The want their information to become aggressive in its own right; they want a transformation of strategies based on making an SOA framework that can synchronize market signals back to sales, production, fulfillment and service.
