Building a Single View of Systems and Integrations From Scratch

Herd joined a Government arm’s-length body mid-way through an ERP implementation programme, inheriting a systems landscape with no clear ownership structure, no system accountability, and little to no existing documentation; only fragments of a map that were owned by different stakeholders that rarely interacted.

We began with structured, direct stakeholder engagement to build foundational understanding from the ground up. Speaking with system owners and users across the organisation, we built a high-level systems landscape map capturing what systems existed, what they were used for, and how users and systems interacted. Rather than treating this as a one-off exercise, we kept it visible as a living document in the programme space, which generated more validation and additions over time than any single formal review could have.

With the landscape established, we facilitated workshops to map integrations – drawing annotated connections between systems to show the volume and nature of interconnectivity, and distinguishing manual processes from automated ones. The environment had very little API-based integration, a reflection of the systems’ age. Throughout, we were deliberate about language, reframing technical concepts so that stakeholders unfamiliar with integration terminology could contribute confidently rather than sitting out of conversations they had valuable knowledge to offer.

We then built a structured template to capture integration detail consistently across workshops and interviews: what data was moving, why, how often, in what volume, in what format, by what method, and at what sensitivity.

This work produced three linked deliverables: a visualisation of all systems in the landscape, a version overlaying the connections between them, and a detailed reference for what each integration actually did. Together, these gave the programme a validated single view of systems and integrations where none had existed before – used directly to identify which integrations needed replacing and which needed to carry over into the new ERP system.

By staying visual, keeping conversations small and informal, and avoiding overly complex modelling, we made it easy for non-technical stakeholders to engage and to surface knowledge that had never been written down. The resulting discovery outputs directly shaped requirements for integration, migration, reporting, security, and data management in the target solution – enabling the programme to assess delivery scope, prioritise critical integrations, identify technical risks, and estimate the complexity of implementation ahead.