The use of best of breed software can provide an edge over competitors, but there are also drawbacks. The good news is, these drawbacks can be overcome with an integration platform that interacts with all software systems through APIs.
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‘Best of breed’ means that you use superior software for any certain purpose instead of choosing one solution that fits all purposes (or a solution that better interacts with any existing systems out of the box). In itself best of breed is a competitive advantage, but you still have to make the data exchange between different software systems seamless and transparent.
The software can be chosen based on the available functionality, giving more choice between different vendors.
They perfectly fit their purpose and perform their function effectively.
Flexibility when performing system upgrades as each application is isolated from one another.
Extending or changing the system doesn’t necessarily impact other applications.
There’s no communication with your other systems by default.
A data management strategy must be created and followed, avoiding duplicate data and/or ensuring that data is always mastered in the correct system.
Reporting and business intelligence might require a data warehousing solution.
These drawbacks can be solved with an integration platform, allowing other applications and data warehousing solutions to interact with all of the different software systems within your organization through APIs.
The use of APIs facilitates the creation of a consolidated, single view, exposing the information contained within multiple systems as a single API. This view ensures that data originates from the correct source system (whichever one was defined in the data management strategy) and combines the relevant data from all systems.
