* SynerG has a new take on mashups
Over the last year the concept of “mashups” – applications that are built by combining two or more services – have become commonplace. You can find Google Maps mashed up with Twitter to create a dynamic mapping service, GeoTwitter or how about Amazon mashed up with eBay to create the Online Jewelry Store. I just talked to a company with a new take on mashups, SynerG.
Over the last year the concept of “mashups” – applications that are built by combining two or more services – have become commonplace. You can find Google Maps mashed up with Twitter to create a dynamic mapping service, GeoTwitter or how about Amazon mashed up with eBay to create the Online Jewelry Store.
I just talked to a company with a new take on mashups, SynerG. The company describes its SynerG Platform, which it launches this week (it has been in “soft launch” mode since 2007) as an “interactive business mashup that addresses the dynamic information needs of the line-of-business.”
What this means is that the company provides interface modules for two or more data “silos” in an enterprise, and through the SynerG Platform integrate them into a unified presentation for end users that can be modified and extended without programming.
Much of its current customer base is involved with customer service. The reason for this is that customer service usually requires access to multiple data sources such as the customer database, accounts, inventory, and so on. In most customer service centers you’ll see agent screens with multiple windows open to each source and if you watch agents you’ll see just how much time they spend entering data multiple times – for example they’ll enter the customer’s name to get the customer accounting data, switch to the order system to look up the account there, switch to the CRM system to update the sales data, switch one more time to the trouble ticket system to rise a query…the inefficiency is amazing.
There have been many attempts to solve this problem and most of them involved some form of “screen scraping” – building a virtual screen and then copying the data off the virtual screen into a user interface. The biggest problem with the approach is that it usually requires custom coding for each situation and changes can be expensive in both time and money to implement.
SynerG gets around this by dynamically converting every data source into XML. The SynerG Platform builds a model of the context of all data elements – what the company calls “federated data” – and performs translations and reformatting producing a Rich Internet Application (RIA) presentation. This provides a view of exactly the data required from each data source. But the really clever part is that the system doesn’t distinguish between run-time and design time so changes can be made on-the-fly by users with the required permissions using drag and drop.
The data sources can be internal and external so services such as Google Maps or data from a weather service could be integrated with the enterprise data. The SynerG Platform doesn’t provide any reporting tools or analytics; it is really an online transaction processing system.
SynerG is implemented through a consultative process that takes no more than three months, and a typical installation is priced in the $200,000 to $250,000 range. The result – a self-service, malleable solution that can be modified without programming – is unique.
