14 Examples of Integration Risk

John Spacey, updated on July 16, 2023

Integration risk is the potential for integration of technology, processes, information, departments or organizations to fail. This can be a project risk whereby different elements of a project fail to integrate. Integration risk can also be a business and technology risk whereby existing integrations have security, quality and operational issues. The following are common types of integration risk.

Process Mismatch

Processes that are broken due to integration issues such as isolated and incompatible systems.

Productivity Risk

Manual workarounds and low productivity rates due to a lack of integration or integration issues.

Performance Risk

Slow or delayed integration that degrades the performance of user interfaces or processes.

Incompatibility

Applications, systems, platforms, machines and infrastructure that are difficult or impossible to integrate.

Data Inconsistency

Inconsistent data across sources leading to poor data quality.

Reliability

Integrations transactions that fail and outages of integration platforms.

Architectural Risk

Poorly designed integration that is expensive to implement, manage and operate.

Transactional Integrity

Transactional integrity issues such as data that is updated in one place but not others.

Operational Outages

Processes and systems often rely on integration such that failed integration can cause operational outages.

Customer Impacts

Customer impacts such as incorrect bills due to failed integration and invalid data.

Information Security

Integration that represents a security vulnerability such as unsecured scripts that transfer private and confidential data.

Vendor Risk

Risks related to integration vendors and proprietary integration products.

Compliance Risk

Integration that creates compliance issues in areas such as handling of private data and information security.

Project Risk

Failed projects due to integration issues.

It is common for complex organizational changes such as mergers and acquisitions to fail due to integration issues.

Overview: Integration Risk
Type	Risk
Definition	The potential for the integration of technology, processes, information, departments or organizations to have negative business impacts.
More Examples	Poorly designed data integration between two technologies leads to data problems that disrupt critical operational processes. Two firms of similar size merge and face serious clashes of organizational culture resulting in declining employee engagement and productivity. A project to integrate order-to-billing processes at a telecom company runs over budget due to underestimated complexity.
Risk Treatments	Avoid Reduce Transfer Accept
Related Concepts	Integration Project Risk