Integration

Configure One's Concept Enterprise Product Configurator, Concept E-Catalog, and Concept E-Commerce products can be deployed as standalone applications, but most customers deploy the Concept™ solutions seamlessly integrated with existing business applications such as ERP, MRP, CAD, and CRM applications.

The term "seamless integration" has many different connotations. To us, seamless integration means that Concept and the other applications share data and that data is maintained in one place. For example, many implementations require Configure One's Concept product to utilize part number, costing, and pricing information that is stored within a company's existing ERP system. A typical integration strategy would be to rely on the ERP application as the system of record for item master data and any changes to that data would be reflected either in real time or on a batch basis in Concept's database. Concept was developed to be ERP, MRP, and CRM neutral. Configure One has a wide range of experience integrating Concept with many different business applications such as:

Configure One provides three different technical options for integrating your existing business applications to Concept:

• Configure One's Concept Connect™ integration module
• Configure One's Concept Connect Advanced™ integration module
• Direct integration

Configure One's Concept Connect integration module:

The Concept Connect module is ideally suited for implementations that don't require the flexibility and full integration capabilities offered by the Concept Connect Advanced module below. The Concept Connect module is based upon pre-defined integration tables within a Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle database that are used to transmit data between Concept and other applications. Transactions addressed by the Concept Connect module are item masters, customer masters, order masters, bills of material, and routings. This module provides standard import and export routines for all relevant transactions, to and from Concept.

Configure One's Concept Connect Advanced integration module:

The Concept Connect Advanced module is a comprehensive enterprise application integration solution. Use this solution to easily create custom connections between Concept and your existing business applications. Concept Connect Advanced combines the ease of point-and-click graphical consoles with the power of flexible scripting, enabling applications to be integrated via their preferred protocols and data formats. The solution also enables ongoing monitoring and business reporting on the entire application integration environment. Configure One's Concept Connect Advanced reduces the effort, time, expense and risk associated with data integration by minimizing the need for custom coding to achieve complex data processing functions and any-to-any mapping between multiple data formats.

Supported data formats include:

• XML
• ASCII text / flat / delimited files
• JDBC compliant relational databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Informix, etc.
• EDI X12
• Microsoft Excel
• HL7

Supported transport protocols include:

• Web Services
• E-mail (SMTP / POP3)
• HTTP / HTTPS
• FTP
• SMTP / POP3
• JMS (MQ Series & Active MQ)
• JDBC
• TCP / IP
• Script
• File
• PGP
• ETL

Direct integration:

This is the least common approach used to integrate Concept with existing business applications. For customers with the technical expertise and desire to hard code the integration, Configure One supplies the complete database schema upon request. Concept's open architecture and the fact that it resides on either a standard Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle database, gives IT professionals the access required to custom develop an integration between applications.

In addition to software, Configure One has technical consultants that specialize in helping customers integrate Concept with their existing applications. Contact us to discuss how we can help your company integrate Concept with your ERP or CRM system.