This question may seem silly, but it represents a fundamental challenge to businesses and software products around the globe.
As companies grow, they naturally build or acquire software for target markets and specific industry needs. These software products are often in different languages, have different databases, and use different identity providers.
When my first startup was acquired by a large healthcare technology company, we became one of dozens of products that served specific market needs.
For example, we had a product to help me as a patient schedule an appointment with my doctor, Bill Jones.
We also had a product with which Bill Jones could schedule a date/time in the Operating Room to perform surgery if I needed it.
We also had a product with which Bill Jones could track my post-surgery outcomes data against new value-based care standards.
We also had a product with which the hospital could track my insurance reimbursements for my surgery performed by my doctor Bill Jones.
The problem was that those were four different products with four different Bill Joneses representing one single, actual, human doctor with me as his patient.
In other words, each product had its own unique identifier for Bill Jones. And, the company lacked a “golden record” that tied them all together across products reflecting the same actual, human Dr. Bill Jones. This meant that Bill Jones in one product had no relation to Bill Jones in the other, which had no relation to Bill Jones in the other and so forth.
As a result, these products required multiple physician rosters with multiple formats that had to be updated and managed across multiple teams to support them.
This also meant that Bill Jones’ hospital could not easily compare his data from these products and use that data to generate critical business insights: for example, to identify his ideal patients or most successful surgeries – or perhaps problem areas.
Finally, this meant that the hospital system became very frustrated with my company because of redundant requests for rosters, limited insights on Bill Jones’ performance, and growing expenses for multiple, disparate products and teams that they knew should have worked as a seamless system.
Sound familiar?
The solution is not as difficult as you might think. Building with BOS, allows seamless integration of existing products and provides a common foundation on which new products can be integrated from the start. This means that all of those products are connected and, among other benefits, there’s a golden record for Bill Jones.
So, with BOS, the answer is, of course: the actual Bill Jones.
