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Chris Reddick (president, CEO, and co-founder of Clarity Ventures) and Ron Halversen (vice-president sales and marketing) continue their discussion of On-Premesis vs SaaS offerings.  

Part 3 of a 4-part series. (Click to return to Part 2)

CHRIS: That really plays to our next topic, which is choosing between these different implementations. Because whenever you're looking at ERP systems, CRM, possibly EMR-EHR systems, a lot of the choice between going with an On-Premise solution versus SaaS-based solution or a hybrid is essentially dependent on things like security. It could be physical access. So a lot of times we'll set up a hybrid environment where the ERP system, I would refer to it as a classic or a relic it's maybe another way to refer to it. And so it actually needs to have what we would refer to as an agent, an integration agent, that's going to run On-premise, but that can talk to the SaaS-based implementation of a connector.

And so the idea is that basically we can leverage lightweight agents that get deployed for these older systems. It can also be used for very secure environments to really lock things down. The actual connector can be fully deployed internally behind physical firewall infrastructure. And so yeah, I would just be curious, Ron, if you were to talk about just some of your experiences with where these get used and just some of the business scenarios that these apply to you.

what is hipaa

RON: My gosh! Yeah, absolutely. I'll try to hit on a couple different ones. The easiest one is to talk about the SaaS. Chris mentioned iPaaS earlier, the Integration Platform as a Service. For example, if you had something like a Shopify hosted storefront and Salesforce, which is a hosted CRM, you don't have anything. You don't have any of that software. It's just like Chase.com. You have to log in to get your bank account. All that's up online. When somebody comes to us and says, can you integrate my Shopify with Salesforce, or perform Shopify ERP integration? The most likely scenario would be for us to up in the cloud, put a server that can run the platform so it can talk in the cloud to the Shopify hosted storefront and the Salesforce hosted CRM. That would be your standard SaaS based implement.

And that's typically when people have a portal up in the cloud talking to another hosted service or another install up in the cloud. That's usually what it makes sense. So we'll do a SaaS-based integration. The On-Premise ones though, I still think are much, much more common. And that's really about the ERPs and the EMR integrations that, like Chris called classic a minute ago, they've been around for 15, 20 years and they still are. That would be like your dynamics, GP, your hospital's running Epic or something. They're installed on a data center behind a firewall and a DMZ, highly secure area at a hospital. And now they've got this mobile app, that's a patient app and they want the patients to be able to schedule appointments, but they want to be very careful, obviously, about what data would be exposed out to that patient portal.

Typically, what'll happen, like Chris said, this lightweight agent, will typically spin up a VM or something behind the hospital's firewall On-premise in their environment that can openly and securely talk to the EMR integration application, or it could be Oracle or NetSuite or any ERP at that client's infrastructure on their network talking securely. Now, our little VM where Connect is running, we can take the IP address of that at VM, define a custom port and have log-in credentials and have kind of a three tiered security that, that is the only entity that can talk to and from the online portal up in the Cloud. Now, instead of poking a hole in the firewall and exposing the entire EMR-ERP out to the internet, we're only exposing Connect on a specific IP, specific port, with specific credentials and only the information it has access to. It's much, much more secure.

And so that's what this On-Premise/Cloud hybrid is, is that we can have Clarity Connect behind that firewall. And I would say most manufacturing, most distribution, most companies that have been around for 20 or 30 years, that's 90% of the time what their environment is because they've got a significant investment in that On-Premise line of business application that they've been using forever, Enterprise QuickBooks, JD Edwards, HP Financials, all of those are typically still running On-Prem and have for 20 years. Whenever we have to integrate with these online portals, that's where these On-Premise to cloud hybrid integrations occur.

CHRIS: That's right. And just the few points on that. You were talking about the security side of things. Those are just some examples with some of the protocols that we use to lock them down. A couple of other things that we see quite often, and this can be pure SaaS, this can be a hybrid or a full On-Prem, but we do a lot of Point-to-Point VPN. And this can be in a SaaS environment where we can have two SaaS systems connecting over Point-to-Point, depending on what they support. And so ultimately, the main thing is that whenever we're integrating the data and we're dealing with the example that you gave, Ron, was a great example. Maybe it's sensitive medical data that we want to be really careful with, well, in that particular situation, having Point-to-Point VPN plus all the other protocols that you mentioned, it just helps everyone sleep well at night, doesn't it?

RON: The security is a big one. Let's jump in then and let's talk about how we get started on these things. I mean, because I'm upfront the sales side of it. A client comes in, I tell them we can do it and then off they go and I hand it off to the team. How does the team get started?

what is hipaa

CHRIS: Yeah, that's a great question. We typically run what we refer to as a discovery. And you can think of this like you would if you were designing a house to then be built and you basically work with an architect to design things out. And a lot of times, you're going to start with some ideas in mind. And so we have basically a self-service process that your team can engage in, where you can get access to training resources and overview that allows your team to independently utilize templates and guides to then go through and build-out mappings, workflows. You can also work with our team to basically walk us through your system. And then we can utilize this walkthrough with a recording, going through your day to day operations. They could be currently manual and really capture 80 to 90% of what your workflows are going to be by just recording and observing what your team currently does, maybe partially manually, maybe partially in an automated way. And then listen to your team narrate.

This is a great way to get information quickly with busy teams. The first option would be more self-service. The second option where we're recording things would be a hybrid between self-service for a good portion of this discovery process. And then our team working with you. For many clients, they're extremely busy and they basically want a very white glove type of walkthrough. And so in that scenario, we really bring our full discovery team to bear. And we're essentially running discussions within your team and basically serving as the extension, a very direct extension of your team. You can almost think of us as virtually being a direct team member within your organization for this time period of this project. And then we're executing on getting all the information that we need. This will include working with different business units, potentially, certainly working within your team to talk with the different folks who have access to the different systems and coordinating and mapping everything out. We have three different flavors around that we typically will consider doing this for.

RON: That makes sense. I've seen us do the white glove, especially when doctor's offices and professional offices, lawyers and things like that when they come in and they don't have it on staff. There really is nobody there to drive, setting up a Dev environment and dealing with credentials and literally driving that integration project. And that's where we've had to go in and call it a white glove service. But literally, run the entire project for them.

Let's talk a little bit then, let's do one step deeper. Let's go a little bit deeper into the actual integration itself. I talked about the three different types of integrations, right? The simple API call, the single persistent, one direction like the FDA API. But we already said that most of these are bidirectional persistent integration. Let's take an example and walk me through an actual example. And we kind of talked, I talked briefly, a sales order goes one way and the shipping tracking status comes back. That would be a bidirectional integration. But dive in a little bit and really tear into technically one of these workflows, if you will, and explain it to us.

what is hipaa

CHRIS: Absolutely. One of the most common workflows that we see, for example, with eCommerce integrations is there will be category data, product data, inventory price data. We may have customer specific pricing and then for the products themselves and the categories, there may be meta information on the side. And all of this data needs to be appropriately up to date and it needs to be accurate. And it tends to have different source of record between the ERP, possibly other external sources and then the eCommerce application. And so just in a very simple hypothetical scenario, the ERP may be the source of record for the SKU, for the product title, for probably the product name. The SKU, the pricing, the inventory, the cut customer specific pricing. And let's say that, that's it.

Then the eCommerce system, if it doesn't already have the record, so you can see this in the workflow diagram on the right, doesn't already have the record, then it's just going to take all the data from the ERP. The connector is running and it goes through business logic. Then in this bidirectional concept, it's going to say, "hey, do you already have the record in the eCommerce? Nope. Okay. Here's all the data from the ERP." We don't want to not bring in data that's available in the ERP. Okay, great. Then one of the marketing team members goes through and many times we'll have a custom workflow that's in place that says, "Hey, marketing team members, we've imported these records. They're marked as not published because we're waiting for you to put the marketing content in there." And so they're new items that got added to the eCommerce platform by the integration.

The marketing team will go in and they'll update the meta titles, meta descriptions, add really nice pictures and maybe do other things to customize them, give them custom URL, etc. Well, we don't want to lose that data next time the integration runs and some connectors will do that. The workflow would then run again after this marketing content has been pushed, and it would say, "aha! I see the data has been updated in the eCommerce system. Maybe a certain status has changed. And so now I want to respect these fields that are in the eCommerce system. And possibly depending on the business, maybe even bring this data back into the ERP." There, you would have a situation where some of the fields, not all of them, some of them would be in the eCommerce as essentially a source of record in the eCommerce for some of the marketing content. And that might get pulled back to the ERP so it can be used within the enterprise for other sources.

And then the data that's in the ERP may have also been updated recently with new pricing. Or maybe there's a new product name and that needs to come in. And so these are just some examples of things that the integration platform needs to be able to handle bringing in updates from the ERP while respecting updates that have been made in the eCommerce platfom and vice versa. So bidirectional on a field level and being able to follow business logic. There may actually be a status change with an order. And based on the status change, we need to respect fields whenever they're in a certain status level, in a different system as the source of record, which is really, really cool. I mean, you can do some really cool things whenever you have this bidirectional multi-field based workflow. But hopefully, that's a good example, just very high-level example there.

RON: Yeah. It makes perfect sense because most of the time business, are taking care of pricing and inventory and things about their products in their ERP configuration. But on the other hand, the customers are initiating invoice payments, requests for quotes, refunds, warranty repairs, and orders, they're initiated on the other side. There's a significant amount of data on both sides that the master sources of truth originates from the opposite end, but that data has to flow back and forth. Especially, I mean, you look at some eCom, it starts as a quote in the eCom and then goes into a quote in the ERP where the sales team then has to set a price, generate a quote, approve a quote, which gets then sent back to the UI where the user gets notified, and then they can convert that quote to an order.

And then the order goes back to the ERP for fulfillment, which then turns back into a ship status and then goes back. And then let's say the product shows up damaged. Then they have to go into that UI and initiate a replacement, which might initiate an RMA workflow. I mean, we've seen some really in-depth workflows, and that's just one piece of one product being purchased that generated all of that integration work.

CHRIS: That's right. Yeah. Fundamentally, that's where the value is, is getting these rather brittle and precise workflows with key sequencing that has to occur to be as automated as possible. I mean, really, is it such that the business has the full automation that makes sense for the business?

RON: Right.

CHRIS: A lot of times there needs to be a manual step, but if the technical side of things is the limitation, that's a problem. If it's just a business workflow that it makes sense from a business perspective for something to be manual, no problem. But you really want to understand, is the partner you're working with, are they able to implement these really granular aspects? And that's a great segue into customization ongoing maintenance.

Continue to Chapter 4 to learn about selecting an eCommerce vendor.

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