| Phase focus | Recommended use cases | Business outcome |
|---|---|---|
Move from discovery to design to delivery.
The Flowgear Architecture Workbench helps you capture your environment in a structured catalog, turn it into visual architecture views, define a target direction, build a roadmap, and track execution in one place.
How the tool works
The Flowgear Architecture Workbench is designed to guide a team from discovery to delivery in a structured, visual way. It starts with the catalog, where you capture systems, integrations, domains, pain points, opportunities, and initiatives. That information then becomes the foundation for the rest of the experience so the diagrams, principles, roadmap, business cases, and tracker are all working from the same source of truth.
Once the catalog is in place, the tool helps you move through the journey step by step. You can shape visual architecture views, assess domain maturity, define guiding principles, build phased roadmap items, and track work through execution. The goal is not just to draw architecture, but to make it practical, traceable, and easy for both business and technical stakeholders to understand and use.
Mission 1: Load assessment project
Open a saved project or import assessment data so the workbench can calculate progress from real content.
Mission 2: Import integration intelligence
Load systems, integrations, ownership, or business cases so the command center can map the battlefield.
Mission 3: Diagnose architecture readiness
Score capability maturity to expose weak zones, hidden risk, and priority intervention points.
Mission 4: Lock operating doctrine
Select and define guiding principles that keep every delivery move aligned and controlled.
Mission 5: Launch phased execution
Build roadmap and flight plan milestones to move from strategy into coordinated delivery.
Business Goals, Drivers & Success Measures
Use this section to capture the strategic outcomes, practical business needs, and measurable success criteria that should guide the architecture. These entries stay with the project, export with the project JSON, and appear in the read-only report.
How the application works
What this workspace is for
This is not only a drawing tool. It is a structured architecture and integration workspace that helps business and technical stakeholders work from the same source of truth.
Export Assessment Report From Word Template
Upload a Word template and generate a populated report from the current workbench project. The export fills known client placeholders and appends generated catalog, roadmap, architecture, and business case sections from the project data.
Executive Summary
Executive summary, assessment scope, recommendations, budgetary assumptions and priority use cases for the Flowgear assessment.
This document summarises the scope of work covered during the Integration and AI Maturity Assessment conducted for ACME. It provides an executive summary of the key findings, together with a catalogue of business use cases where Flowgear can add value across the organisation.
The use cases have been grouped into practical phases, including quick wins, stabilisation, optimisation and longer-term transformation opportunities. Each use case is intended to help the client assess where integration, automation, governance, risk reduction, operational efficiency and future AI readiness can deliver measurable business value.
The purpose of this document is to give the executive team a clear, high-level view of the opportunities identified, the potential return on investment, and which projects should be prioritised for further scoping, professional services engagement and implementation.
The assessment typically identifies business-critical processes that rely on manual work, files, spreadsheets, mailbox monitoring, FTP folders, scripts, scheduled jobs or key-person knowledge. These processes may work today, but they often create operational risk because they are difficult to monitor, hard to audit, dependent on manual follow-up and not always visible to business users.
Flowgear can add value by providing a governed integration, automation and monitoring layer across these processes. In the short term, Flowgear can deliver practical quick wins by automating high-friction processes, improving observability and strengthening operational control. In the medium term, Flowgear can standardise exception handling, notifications, workflow support and monitoring. In the longer term, Flowgear can help the client move toward reusable API-led services, AI-ready data access, controlled workflow automation and stronger governance over business-critical integrations.
Assessment Scope
Flowgear completed an integration and automation opportunity assessment for ACME Corp, focused on understanding the current systems landscape, key integration touchpoints, data movement patterns, operational dependencies, and areas where Flowgear can improve process control, automation, monitoring and visibility.
The assessment started with the IT application environment to establish a baseline view of the systems known to IT, how those systems currently communicate, where integration points already exist, how information is passed between systems, and where manual workarounds or file-based processes are used to support day-to-day operations.
This included reviewing the role of NetSuite ERP as the central ERP or business platform, together with related systems such as Shopify Plus, NetSuite ERP, Akeneo PIM, Salesforce CRM, HubSpot Marketing, Zendesk, MES, WMS, 3PL TMS, Workday, ADP Payroll, Snowflake, Flowgear iPaaS, Power BI, Supplier EDI Gateway, Banking Platform, Microsoft Copilot (MCP host), Azure OpenAI Service.
Selected business areas were also engaged to validate how systems are used in practice, understand process pain points, and identify where integration, workflow automation, monitoring or Flowgear web apps could deliver practical business value.
The departments engaged during the assessment included
IT
HR
Finance
E-Commerce
These discussions helped identify opportunities across the business and highlighted where Flowgear could improve process efficiency, reduce manual effort, strengthen governance, improve visibility and support future AI-enabled process improvement.
The output of the assessment is a practical catalogue of use cases where Flowgear can assist the client. Each use case is supported by business-case detail covering the business objective, current process and risk, proposed future process, expected benefit, estimated professional services effort, estimated active workflows, indicative cost and recommended priority.
The assessment also documents the broader integration landscape, including existing system touchpoints, current file-based interfaces, monitoring gaps, manual dependencies, future-state opportunities and roadmap groupings. This provides the client with a clear view of where Flowgear can add value immediately, where stabilisation is required, and which opportunities should form part of a longer-term integration, automation and AI-readiness roadmap.
As part of the assessment output, Flowgear also provides structured documentation and supporting views, including:
Current systems landscape diagram
A visual representation of the systems currently used across the business, showing how key applications interact with one another and how data moves between systems, departments and operational processes.
Reference architecture
A target-state reference architecture that can be tailored to the client's environment and used to guide future integration, automation and platform decisions.
Integration architecture domains
A maturity view across the architecture domains required to make integration scalable, governed, secure, supportable and AI-ready over time.
Principles and guidelines
A practical set of integration principles and guidelines that can be used to guide roadmap tasks, architecture decisions, design standards and future implementation work.
Rules library
A central view of integration rules, behaviour settings, ownership and governance considerations captured across the proposed integration and automation flows.
Business case library
A structured library of drafted business cases, allowing the client to review, search and drill down into the detail of each identified opportunity.
Roadmap task manager
A phased delivery roadmap that groups opportunities into Quick Wins, Stabilisation, Optimisation and Transformation, with the ability to manage owners, dates, priorities and delivery status.
Flight plan
A high-level delivery timeline that shows how roadmap items are sequenced over time, where delivery pressure points may arise, and how work can progress from quick wins through to longer-term transformation.
Integration business case detail
A structured business case view for each planned integration or automation opportunity, covering the current process, proposed future process, expected benefits, delivery scope, estimated effort and operational or commercial value.
The assessment was based on the systems, processes and operational workflows currently in place at ACME Corp. Flowgear's role was to assess the existing environment, identify integration and automation opportunities, and recommend practical areas where the Flowgear platform can improve efficiency, control, visibility, monitoring, governance, security and AI readiness.
The assessment did not include a review of alternative business applications, software platforms or third-party technologies that are not currently part of the the client environment. Flowgear has not made recommendations on whether existing systems should be replaced, which systems are best suited for specific business functions, or what new applications should be procured to address gaps outside of Flowgear's integration and automation scope.
The assessment also did not seek to define ACME Corp's business processes from first principles. Recommendations were made in the context of the current processes discussed during the assessment, with a focus on how those processes could be improved, automated, governed or monitored using Flowgear.
Any broader process redesign, system selection, technology procurement or enterprise architecture decisions would need to be addressed separately by the client and its relevant business, IT or advisory teams.
Commercial and Budgetary Assumptions
The estimates below are indicative and are provided for budgetary purposes only. They should be confirmed during a detailed scoping session for each catalogue item the client chooses to move forward with.
Where Flowgear is required to complete the implementation, Flowgear Solution Architects will define the detailed scope and provide a fixed-price, turnkey proposal based on the agreed scope, deliverables and assumptions.
Professional services effort is calculated at $ 200 per hour, excluding VAT. The commercials also include an indicative active workflow estimate for each catalogue item. These estimates should be considered cumulatively, as they help determine the subscription plan required to support the selected use cases, production environment, SLA, retention, hosting and user access requirements.
Important note: Flowgear offers a complimentary technical certification course. Where the client has its own technical team, Flowgear recommends that those team members complete the certification and, where practical, build the selected solutions internally. This may allow the client to avoid Flowgear professional services implementation costs, with the delivery effort treated as an internal cost.
Where the client has its own technical team, Flowgear recommends that those team members complete the relevant technical certification and, where practical, build selected solutions internally. Where the client builds internally, Flowgear can still provide support and guidance through purchased support hours, allowing the client team to lead delivery while still accessing Flowgear expertise where required.
The table below groups the identified opportunities by recommended timing. The intention is to give the client a quick view of what should be prioritised now, what should be budgeted for next, and what should remain on the transformation roadmap.
Each catalogue item listed below is supported by a detailed business use case in the following sections. These business use cases provide additional decision-level detail, including the current challenge, the proposed Flowgear future process, the expected business value, the risk reduction and the recommended action.
| Use Case | Description | Key Benefit / Risk | Value / Priority | Effort / Cost | Subscription Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quick Wins | |||||
| Publish accurate stock and selling price from ERP to Shopify to improve conversion and margin control. | Benefit: Accurate stock availability (stock accuracy) Risk: Overselling stock -> negative customer experience, cancelled orders (stock risk) |
High / Quick Wins | 15 hrs / $3,000 | Standard Subscription | |
| Implement operational events to data platform to improve the monitoring and kpi reporting process. | Benefit: Improved accuracy, reduced manual effort and better cross-functional visibility for operational insight. Risk: Manual dependency -> Delays and inconsistencies in KPI production (timeliness risk) |
Very High / Quick Wins | 17 hrs / $3,400 | Standard Subscription | |
| Replace manual rekeying and automate the flow of confirmed web orders into the ERP so ACME.co can scale digital sales without adding order capture headcount. | Benefit: Lower order admin effort, faster release to fulfillment, better peak-trade resilience and fewer order creation defects. Risk: Order processing delays due to bottlenecks in human actions especially during peak times |
Very High / Quick Wins | 10 hrs / $2,000 | Standard | |
| Quick Wins total | 42 hours / $8,400 |
Standard Subscription Standard |
|||
| Stabilization | |||||
| Create Web app to turn approved customer service return requests into governed ERP RMAs. | Benefit: Faster returns processing, clearer customer communication and stronger financial control for returns and credits. Risk: Delayed RMA creation -> Slow turnaround on returns and credits (cycle delay) |
Medium-High / Stabilization | 40 hrs / $8,000 | Standard Subscription | |
| Synchronize production completion events from MES to NetSuite ERP to improve inventory and costing accuracy. | Benefit: Improved stock visibility, better costing timeliness and less rework for finance and operations. Risk: Delayed inventory updates -> ERP stock positions lag actual production (inventory lag) |
Medium-High / Stabilization | 14 hrs / $2,800 | Standard | |
| Stabilization total | 54 hours / $10,800 |
Standard Subscription Standard |
|||
| Optimization | |||||
| Create a finance-ready ERP data feed into the enterprise data platform. | Benefit: Faster finance analytics, stronger auditability and less reliance on ad hoc extracts. Risk: Delayed data availability -> Finance operates on stale extracts (timeliness risk) |
High / Optimization | 38 hrs / $7,600 | Professional | |
| Publish a nightly refresh of curated integration and order KPI facts into an embedding index so RAG and Copilot answers stay grounded in ACME-approved numbers and not internet hallucinations. | Benefit: Trustworthy AI answers for exec Q&A; single definition of KPIs used in Copilot. Risk: Untrusted AI outputs -> Hallucinated or inconsistent answers from unconstrained LLMs (AI accuracy risk) |
High / Optimization | 30 hrs / $6,000 | Professional subscription - Custom security groups needed | |
| Optimization total | 68 hours / $13,600 |
Professional Professional subscription - Custom security groups needed |
|||
| Transformation | |||||
| Provide a single governed path for any LLM completion used in ACME automation, blocking free-form ERP writes and enforcing redaction and model policy. | Benefit: Controlled and compliant AI usage (governance) Risk: Uncontrolled ERP updates -> LLM outputs may create or change records incorrectly (financial risk) |
Strategic / Transformation | TBC / TBC | TBC but professional Likely. | |
| Deliver a daily Teams narrative summarising integration health so business and IT leaders consume status without opening technical consoles. | Benefit: Higher situational awareness, faster escalation, fewer meetings. Risk: Information overload or oversimplification -> AI summaries may omit critical technical nuance (interpretation risk) |
Strategic / Transformation | TBC / TBC | TBC but professional assumed | |
| Transformation total | TBC |
TBC | |||
Recommendations
Based on the use cases identified for ACME, the first priority should be to establish control before scaling delivery. The assessment points to a business that has strong appetite for integration, automation and AI, but where governance, ownership, release management, code review, landscape visibility and support accountability are not yet mature enough to support rapid expansion safely.
The recommended approach is to use Flowgear as the integration and automation control plane while ACME stands up a practical Integration Centre of Excellence. The first implementation wave should focus on visibility, standards and operational quick wins: a governed integration catalogue, reusable build patterns, release controls, observability, runbooks and a small number of high-value business flows that prove the model.
Once those controls are in place, ACME can move into optimisation and transformation initiatives such as commerce integration, HR and finance controls, supplier exchange, analytics grounding, MCP-enabled Copilot access and governed Azure OpenAI workflows.
Recommendations
Maintain the detailed recommendation text that the Executive Summary links into.
ACME should establish a practical Integration Centre of Excellence as the operating model for Flowgear, integration delivery, automation governance and AI-enabled system access. This does not need to become a heavy central bureaucracy, but it does need to define clear ownership, standards, decision rights and support accountability.
The Integration Centre of Excellence should be responsible for
- Maintaining the integration catalogue and system landscape view.
- Owning integration standards, naming conventions, reusable patterns and minimum documentation requirements.
- Running design review checkpoints for new integrations and major changes.
- Governing release management, environment promotion and production support handover.
- Coordinating security, data ownership, monitoring, audit evidence and AI guardrails.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts all teams that build, approve, operate or consume integrations, including:
Enterprise Architecture and IT leadership
Flowgear developers and integration specialists
IT Operations and Service Desk teams
Business process owners in Commerce, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, HR, Finance and Analytics
Security, Risk, Internal Audit and Data Governance stakeholders
Executive sponsors responsible for digital and operational transformation
Key Understanding
ACME currently has strong demand for integration and automation, but governance is too dependent on individuals and informal knowledge. Without a defined operating model, every new integration risks becoming a one-off solution with unclear ownership, inconsistent support and limited auditability.
The Integration Centre of Excellence creates the structure needed to scale safely. It should ensure that every integration has:
A named business owner and technical owner
A documented purpose and support model
A reviewed design and approved pattern
Monitoring, alerting and runbook coverage
Release, testing and rollback expectations
Clear rules for AI, MCP and LLM-enabled access
This gives ACME a repeatable way to grow Flowgear adoption while reducing shadow IT, key-person dependency and uncontrolled system access.
ACME should treat the integration catalogue as a controlled business asset, not a one-off assessment artefact. The catalogue should become the authoritative view of what integrations exist, which systems they connect, what business process they support, who owns them and how they are supported.
Capture every known interface, automation, file exchange, API, scheduled job and AI-enabled tool access point.
Link each integration to a business capability, owner, support path, priority and roadmap phase.
Use the catalogue to drive design reviews, impact assessment, release planning and support readiness.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts all functions that need visibility over the current and future landscape, including:
Enterprise Architecture
IT Operations and Support
Digital Commerce and Customer Service
Manufacturing, Warehouse and Supply Chain teams
Finance, HR and Payroll
Security, Risk and Audit teams
Analytics and AI teams using operational data
Key Understanding
ACME does not yet have a reliable shared view of the integration landscape. This creates risk because business-critical processes may depend on undocumented flows, hidden dependencies, tactical exports or individual knowledge.
A governed catalogue will help ACME answer basic but critical questions
What systems are connected?
Which integrations are live, planned, fragile or duplicated?
Who owns each process and support outcome?
What data moves between systems and why?
Which integrations are candidates for monitoring, replacement, reuse or AI exposure?
This catalogue should become the foundation for the roadmap, release planning, support ownership and Integration Centre of Excellence governance.
ACME should introduce clear coding standards and reusable Flowgear patterns before integration demand accelerates further. The objective is to prevent every team or developer from solving common problems differently.
The first standards should cover
Naming conventions for flows, variables, endpoints, schedules and reusable services.
Standard approaches for validation, error handling, retries, idempotency and replay.
Secure handling of secrets, credentials, tokens and service identities.
Logging, correlation IDs and business-readable exception messages.
Reusable templates for APIs, file handling, mailbox ingestion, notifications and workflow approvals.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts the teams responsible for designing, building and maintaining integration assets, including:
Flowgear developers and solution architects
Enterprise Architecture
IT Operations and Service Desk teams
Security and platform administrators
Business teams that rely on consistent support and issue resolution
Key Understanding
Without coding standards and reusable patterns, integration quality becomes inconsistent. Two flows may solve the same problem in different ways, making support harder and increasing the risk of hidden defects, missed alerts and poor audit evidence.
Standardisation should not slow delivery down. Done properly, it makes delivery faster because developers can reuse approved templates and reviewers know exactly what to check.
Each production integration should have
A consistent build structure
Clear logging and exception handling
Documented input, output and ownership assumptions
Security and credential controls
A support handover pack
A reviewed design before production release
This gives ACME the technical foundation needed for a mature integration practice.
ACME should introduce a formal release management approach for Flowgear and integration changes. This should cover how integrations are designed, reviewed, tested, approved, promoted and supported after go-live.
Define separate development, test and production expectations.
Require release notes, rollback steps and business sign-off for production changes.
Introduce code review or peer review before production deployment.
Maintain a release calendar for high-risk flows and shared platform changes.
Record production changes against the integration catalogue and roadmap.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts all teams involved in change delivery and production support, including:
Flowgear delivery teams
IT Operations and Service Desk
Business process owners
Enterprise Architecture
Security and Risk teams
Finance, HR, Commerce and Supply Chain users affected by production changes
Key Understanding
ACME has a material governance gap around release management. Without controlled promotion and review, integration changes can enter production without enough testing, documentation, rollback planning or support readiness.
Release management should be lightweight but mandatory. It should ensure that every production change has:
A clear reason for change
A reviewed design or change note
Evidence of testing
Business approval where the process impact is material
Known rollback or recovery steps
Updated runbook and support ownership
This protects business-critical processes while giving ACME confidence to increase delivery velocity through Flowgear.
Every critical integration at ACME should have clear monitoring, alerting, ownership and runbook coverage. Integration failures should not depend on users noticing missing data, delayed orders or broken reports.
Define what successful processing looks like for each flow.
Alert the accountable team when a flow fails, stalls or produces incomplete data.
Capture run history, exception details and business-readable evidence.
Create runbooks for common failures, replay scenarios and escalation paths.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts all business and support areas that depend on automated or system-driven processes, including:
IT Operations and Service Desk
Digital Commerce and Customer Service
Warehouse, Manufacturing and Supply Chain teams
Finance, HR and Payroll
Analytics and Data Platform teams
Business process owners and operational managers
Key Understanding
Many of ACME's highest-value use cases depend on reliable handoffs between Shopify, NetSuite, MES, WMS, 3PL providers, Workday, ADP, Snowflake, Power BI, Teams and AI services. These flows cannot remain invisible background processes.
Monitoring must become an operational control. Each important flow should make it clear:
Whether it ran successfully
Whether expected files, events or API responses were received
Whether downstream systems accepted the data
Who owns investigation and recovery
What evidence is available for audit or operational review
This recommendation directly supports the integration control tower, Teams health digest and broader Flowgear observability baseline.
ACME should prioritise the operational flows that affect order capture, inventory availability, warehouse execution and customer shipment visibility. These processes are visible to customers and have direct revenue, fulfilment and service implications.
The first wave should include Shopify order orchestration, trusted stock and price publishing, ERP-to-WMS orchestration, shipment confirmation and 3PL tracking visibility.
Use these flows to prove reusable standards, monitoring and exception handling.
Avoid scaling new commerce capabilities until stock, price and order handoff rules are controlled.
Create business-facing support visibility for failed or delayed order and fulfilment events.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts customer-facing and operational teams, including
Digital Commerce
Customer Service
Warehouse and Supply Chain teams
Manufacturing and Planning teams
Finance and revenue operations
IT Operations and Flowgear support
Customers and trading partners affected by order and shipment reliability
Key Understanding
Commerce and fulfilment integrations are high-value but also high-risk because failures become visible quickly. Incorrect stock, delayed order creation, missed shipment confirmations or poor tracking visibility can create customer dissatisfaction and operational rework.
ACME should use these integrations to establish the first reusable delivery pattern
Validate business rules before posting to core systems
Surface exceptions early
Provide replay and recovery controls
Confirm downstream acceptance
Link operational alerts to accountable owners
This creates a practical proof point for Flowgear and builds confidence before broader optimisation and transformation work continues.
ACME should treat finance, HR and analytics integrations as control processes, not only data movement. These flows carry audit, payroll, reporting and compliance implications and therefore require stronger validation, evidence and ownership than ordinary operational extracts.
Priority areas include HR-to-payroll master data, finance journals and data platform feeds, Snowflake-to-Power BI reporting, treasury payment workflow and governed analytics grounding for AI use cases.
Validate data before it reaches payroll, finance, banking or reporting consumers.
Provide Finance and HR with clear processing evidence and exception visibility.
Maintain lineage and reconciliation controls for analytics and AI grounding data.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts all control-sensitive stakeholders, including
Finance, Treasury and Reporting teams
HR and Payroll teams
Internal Audit and Risk
Analytics and Data Platform teams
IT Operations and Integration Support
Executive stakeholders relying on Power BI and management reporting
Key Understanding
Finance and HR integrations affect trust, compliance and decision-making. If data is incomplete, late or poorly governed, the business may make decisions from unreliable reports or expose itself to payroll, payment and audit risk.
ACME should ensure these integrations include
Business-readable validation and exception reporting
Audit-ready run history and evidence
Defined ownership for data quality and sign-off
Controlled change and release processes
Clear separation between read-only AI insight and system-of-record write actions
This gives ACME a stronger foundation for reliable reporting, governed payroll operations and safer AI-assisted analysis.
ACME should not allow AI tools to grow around uncontrolled system access. MCP, Copilot and Azure OpenAI patterns should be introduced through governed Flowgear routes with strict approval, logging, allow-lists and clear separation between read-only insight and operational write actions.
Start with read-only catalog, workflow and integration status queries.
Use Flowgear to mediate approved tool access and enforce policy boundaries.
Log prompt, tool and response metadata without exposing sensitive payloads unnecessarily.
Require human approval for payment, payroll, customer-impacting or system-of-record actions.
Who This Affects
This recommendation impacts teams involved in AI adoption and business-system access, including:
Chief Digital and Technology Office
Enterprise Architecture and Security
Analytics and AI Centre of Excellence
IT Operations and Flowgear administrators
Finance, HR, Commerce and Supply Chain process owners
Risk, Legal and Internal Audit stakeholders
Key Understanding
ACME has strong opportunity to use AI for summarisation, health digests, guided support, architecture search and analytics Q&A. However, AI becomes risky when it can access undocumented systems, retrieve sensitive data or trigger actions without governance.
The initial AI roadmap should focus on safe foundations
MCP catalog and workflow tools for read-only Copilot access
Governed Azure OpenAI completion gateway
RAG grounding from curated analytics slices
Teams integration health digest
AI governance forum and approval model
This allows ACME to demonstrate AI value while protecting core systems, sensitive data and operational accountability.
Mature the Integration Centre of Excellence into a durable operating model
The Integration Centre of Excellence should become the normal way ACME manages integration demand, standards, roadmap decisions, design reviews, release governance and production support accountability.
Maintain a current integration catalogue and landscape view.
Review roadmap priorities quarterly with business owners.
Keep standards, templates, release controls and runbooks current.
Position Flowgear as the governed integration, automation and AI-access control plane
Flowgear should become the approved route for orchestration, automation, monitoring, workflow support and controlled AI tool access across ACME's enterprise systems.
Use Flowgear for reusable integration and automation patterns.
Route high-risk system actions through approved controls.
Keep observability and audit evidence built into every critical flow.
Move from reactive support to proactive operational intelligence
ACME should use Flowgear telemetry, Snowflake, Teams and Power BI to move from reactive incident handling to proactive health visibility and predictive operational support.
Build control tower dashboards and SLA views.
Use Teams health digests to surface priority exceptions.
Use analytics and AI to support triage, trend analysis and continuous improvement.
Avoid shadow IT and uncontrolled AI expansion
As business teams adopt automation and AI tools, ACME should use the governance model to prevent unmanaged credentials, duplicated integrations and direct LLM-to-system access.
Require approved patterns for all new automations.
Keep AI tools action-scoped and auditable.
Separate experimentation from production-grade integration.
The recommended next step is for ACME to confirm the governance foundation and first implementation wave before additional automation or AI initiatives are allowed to scale.
ACME should
Confirm the executive sponsor and operating mandate for the Integration Centre of Excellence.
Approve the first implementation wave around catalogue ownership, Flowgear standards, release management, observability and selected commerce or fulfilment quick wins.
Confirm the business owner, technical owner, success measure and sign-off criteria for each approved use case.
Decide which teams will be trained and certified to build Flowgear solutions internally.
Define the minimum design pack, code review checklist, release process and production support handover requirements.
Confirm the AI guardrail model for MCP, Copilot and Azure OpenAI access before business users are given broad access.
Revisit the roadmap quarterly and reprioritise based on business value, operational urgency, risk and delivery capacity.
ACME should proceed in controlled phases. Start by establishing the Integration Centre of Excellence, catalogue ownership, coding standards, release management and monitoring controls. Use the first commerce, fulfilment and observability projects to prove value, then expand into HR, finance, analytics and governed AI initiatives once the operating model is stable.
Integration Catalog
ACME Corporation – Integration, AI & Automation Programme · ACME Integration Catalog
| Workbench ID | Integration Name | Touchpoint Label | Source System | Destination System | Business Capability | Business Process | Business Goal | Trigger / Frequency | Pattern | Protocol / Transport | Format | Current Status | Owner | Notes / Gaps | Flowgear Specific | Workbench Status | Workbench Notes | Business case | Rules | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INT-001 | Shopify orders to ERP | Order create / update | Shopify Plus | NetSuite ERP | Order to Cash | eCommerce order management | Reduce manual rekeying and speed fulfillment | Real time | API orchestration | REST | JSON | Planned | Digital Commerce | Needs customer, tax, shipping and discount rules aligned before go-live. | Use Flowgear for real-time order orchestration and exception handling. | Planned | Needs customer, tax, shipping and discount rules aligned before go-live. | |||
| INT-002 | ERP inventory and pricing to Shopify | Stock and price publish | NetSuite ERP | Shopify Plus | Order to Cash | eCommerce product availability | Improve stock accuracy and margin control online | Every 15 minutes | Scheduled API sync | REST | JSON | Planned | Digital Commerce | Requires sellable inventory logic by warehouse and price list selection. | Flowgear schedule plus throttling, delta logic and retry queue. | Planned | Requires sellable inventory logic by warehouse and price list selection. | |||
| INT-003 | Product master to channels | Product publish | Akeneo PIM | Shopify Plus | Product Information Management | Product launch and maintenance | Improve product data quality and reduce launch time | Event driven + scheduled | API / event hybrid | REST / webhook | JSON | In Progress | Product Data Team | Variant attributes, rich media and channel-specific descriptions still being standardized. | Flowgear mediates channel-specific transformations and validation. | In Progress | Variant attributes, rich media and channel-specific descriptions still being standardized. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-004 | Sales opportunities to ERP quotes | Won opportunity handoff | Salesforce CRM | NetSuite ERP | Lead to Order | Sales quoting and handoff | Reduce sales admin effort and improve quote-to-order conversion | On status change | Business workflow | REST | JSON | Planned | Sales Operations | Need business approval for item master and price-book alignment. | Flowgear to orchestrate approvals, validations and ERP creation. | Planned | Need business approval for item master and price-book alignment. | |||
| INT-005 | Marketing leads to CRM | Lead sync | HubSpot Marketing | Salesforce CRM | Lead Management | Marketing to sales conversion | Improve lead response time and attribution quality | Near real time | API sync | REST | JSON | Live | Marketing Operations | Deduplication rules work but campaign attribution needs refinement. | Flowgear monitors lead sync failures and duplicate exceptions. | Live | Deduplication rules work but campaign attribution needs refinement. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-006 | Customer service tickets to ERP returns | RMA initiation | Zendesk | NetSuite ERP | Service to Resolution | Returns and claims | Shorten RMA cycle time and improve customer visibility | On approved ticket type | Workflow + API | REST | JSON | Planned | Customer Service | Return reason mapping and finance approval thresholds required. | Flowgear web app for exception handling and approval routing. | Planned | Return reason mapping and finance approval thresholds required. | |||
| INT-007 | Production completion to ERP | Finished goods posting | MES | NetSuite ERP | Manufacture to Stock | Production reporting | Improve inventory accuracy and posting timeliness | On production close | Event driven | REST / message | JSON | In Progress | Manufacturing | Requires lot, serial and scrap handling decisions. | Flowgear to normalize production events and control retries. | In Progress | Requires lot, serial and scrap handling decisions. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-008 | ERP work orders to MES | Work order release | NetSuite ERP | MES | Manufacture to Stock | Production planning execution | Remove manual work order capture on the shop floor | On release and change | API sync | REST | JSON | Planned | Manufacturing | Routing, BOM and revision synchronization must be finalized. | Flowgear applies release rules and manages acknowledgements. | Planned | Routing, BOM and revision synchronization must be finalized. | |||
| INT-009 | ERP orders to warehouse | Fulfillment request | NetSuite ERP | WMS | Plan to Fulfil | Warehouse execution | Increase pick accuracy and reduce fulfillment latency | Real time | API orchestration | REST | JSON | Live | Supply Chain | Live flow exists but monitoring and replay controls are still too manual. | Flowgear currently manages orchestration, control logging and alerting. | Live | Live flow exists but monitoring and replay controls are still too manual. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-010 | Warehouse shipment confirmation to ERP | Shipment / pick confirmation | WMS | NetSuite ERP | Plan to Fulfil | Shipment confirmation | Improve customer shipment visibility and invoice timing | Near real time | API orchestration | REST | JSON | Live | Supply Chain | Need stronger reconciliation for partial shipments and backorders. | Flowgear handles state transitions and partial shipment logic. | Live | Need stronger reconciliation for partial shipments and backorders. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-011 | ERP shipment to 3PL | Transport booking | NetSuite ERP | 3PL TMS | Order to Cash | Carrier allocation and dispatch | Automate dispatch booking and tracking visibility | On shipment ready | API orchestration | REST | JSON | Planned | Logistics | Carrier service codes and freight charge model still under review. | Flowgear will handle booking, callback updates and support notifications. | Planned | Carrier service codes and freight charge model still under review. | |||
| INT-012 | 3PL tracking back to channels | Tracking update | 3PL TMS | Shopify Plus | Order to Cash | Customer shipment visibility | Reduce WISMO contacts and improve CX | Event driven | Webhook + API | Webhook / REST | JSON | Planned | Logistics | Need tracking event normalization and late-delivery alerting. | Flowgear standardizes carrier events and publishes customer updates. | Planned | Need tracking event normalization and late-delivery alerting. | |||
| INT-013 | HR master to payroll | Employee master sync | Workday | ADP Payroll | Hire to Retire | Payroll administration | Remove dual capture and improve payroll readiness | Daily + event-driven exceptions | API / file hybrid | REST / SFTP | JSON / CSV | Planned | HR Operations | Pay group, cost center and legal entity mapping still incomplete. | Flowgear to validate and stage employee changes before payroll handoff. | Planned | Pay group, cost center and legal entity mapping still incomplete. | |||
| INT-014 | ERP finance journals to data platform | Journal and subledger export | NetSuite ERP | Snowflake | Record to Report | Finance analytics | Improve near real-time finance reporting and auditability | Hourly | ETL / data sync | REST / connector | JSON | In Progress | Finance Systems | Need chart-of-accounts hierarchy and posting status rules aligned. | Flowgear stages finance extracts and applies lineage metadata. | In Progress | Need chart-of-accounts hierarchy and posting status rules aligned. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-015 | Operational events to data platform | Operational telemetry feed | Flowgear iPaaS | Snowflake | Operational Insight | Monitoring and KPI reporting | Create an integration observability and business KPI layer | Streaming / micro-batch | Event streaming | API / staged file | JSON | Planned | IT Operations | Decide retention windows, KPI ownership and cost controls for telemetry. | Flowgear publishes run history, exceptions and business event facts. | Planned | Decide retention windows, KPI ownership and cost controls for telemetry. | |||
| INT-016 | Data platform to BI | Curated model refresh | Snowflake | Power BI | Decision Support | Management reporting | Provide trusted cross-functional dashboards | Hourly and daily | Semantic model refresh | Native connector | Dataset | Live | Analytics | Dashboards are live but metric definitions vary across departments. | Flowgear not primary runtime here, but governance ties back to integration outputs. | Live | Dashboards are live but metric definitions vary across departments. | Available for planned integrations | ||
| INT-017 | Supplier PO exchange | PO outbound / ASN inbound | NetSuite ERP | Supplier EDI Gateway | Procure to Pay | Supplier collaboration | Reduce supplier order cycle time and inbound receiving effort | On PO create and ASN receive | EDI orchestration | AS2 / SFTP | X12 / EDIFACT | Planned | Procurement | Trading partner onboarding and message standards need phased rollout. | Flowgear orchestrates partner routing, validations and acknowledgements. | Planned | Trading partner onboarding and message standards need phased rollout. | |||
| INT-018 | ERP cash forecast to banking portal | Payment file and bank response | NetSuite ERP | Banking Platform | Treasury Management | Payments and cash control | Improve payment control and reduce bank file handling risk | Daily / on approval | File + API hybrid | SFTP / REST | ISO20022 / CSV / JSON | Planned | Treasury | Approval workflow, signatory limits and return-file handling required. | Flowgear manages payment release workflow, secure delivery and return processing. | Planned | Approval workflow, signatory limits and return-file handling required. | |||
| INT-019 | MCP catalog & workflow tools for Copilot | MCP tool discovery & invocation | Flowgear iPaaS | Microsoft Copilot (MCP host) | Digital Workplace | AI-assisted architecture & support | Let architects and L2 support ask Copilot for approved integration context (catalog rows, statuses, runbook excerpts) via Flowgear MCP, no spreadsheet hunting | On demand (user / agent) | MCP over HTTPS | MCP / REST | JSON | Planned | Enterprise Architecture | Define tool allow-list (read_catalog_item, search_integrations, workflow_run_status, list_runbooks). Red-team prompt injection. Register app in Entra ID. | Implement Flowgear MCP server surface with OAuth/OIDC, per-tool authorization, rate limits, and audit to Snowflake (INT-015 pipeline). | Planned | MCP tool contracts in review; Entra app registration pending. Pilot with Architecture + Integration COE only. | |||
| INT-020 | Governed Azure OpenAI completion gateway | Policy-wrapped chat completion | Flowgear iPaaS | Azure OpenAI Service | AI Governance | Controlled LLM access | Centralise LLM calls behind Flowgear for redaction, logging, model allow-list, and blocking of unapproved downstream actions | On orchestration step / API | API orchestration | REST | JSON | Planned | IT Architecture & Security | Content filters, PII scanner, max tokens, no tool-use unless explicitly enabled. Separate deployment for prod vs sandbox. | Flowgear workflow steps invoke Azure OpenAI with static system prompts from library; responses stored as structured notes only : never direct ERP write. | Planned | Security sign-off required before any production traffic. Sandbox endpoint live for prompt harness tests. | |||
| INT-021 | AI summarised integration health digest to Teams | Daily ops channel post | Flowgear iPaaS | Microsoft Teams | Operational Insight | Shift-left monitoring communication | Give ops and product owners a concise daily narrative of failures, SLA breaches, and hot integrations: human-readable without opening Flowgear | Daily 07:00 regional | Scheduled orchestration + AI summarise | REST (Graph API) | JSON | Planned | IT Operations | Uses INT-020 for summarisation of telemetry aggregates from Snowflake; reviewer optional for first 4 weeks. | Flowgear aggregates INT-015 metrics, calls governed OpenAI step, posts adaptive card to #integration-health. | Planned | Channel naming and audience (global vs regional) to be decided with Comms. | |||
| INT-022 | Curated analytics slice for RAG grounding | Embedding index refresh | Snowflake | Azure OpenAI Service | Decision Support | Trusted analytics Q&A | Refresh a governed subset of integration + order KPI facts for retrieval-augmented Q&A:no raw PII tables | Nightly | Batch extract + vector upsert | SQL / REST | Parquet / JSON | Planned | Analytics & AI CoE | Curated views only (integration_id, volumes, error_rates, phase). Embeddings in Azure AI Search; access tied to Entra groups. | Flowgear job exports approved Snowflake views, triggers embedding pipeline; pairs with INT-019/020 for Copilot answers grounded in ACME facts. | Planned | Data steward approval needed for each column in RAG projection. Start with integration KPI mart only. |
Reference Architecture
Use this page to shape an editable target-state reference architecture. Every heading, paragraph, app strip, platform group and capability can be tailored to your project and exported with the rest of the workbench.
Page overview
Design principles
Consumer apps
Delivery & promotion
Provider apps
Closing summary
Business Case Library
Review all drafted business cases in one place, search them quickly, and drill down into the full business case detail when you want to refine or present one of them.
Business Case Library
| Catalog ID | Business Case | Owner | Priority | Phase | Flowgear | Effort (hrs) | Concurrent Flows | Impl. Cost | Last Updated | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCP catalog & workflow tools for CopilotFlowgear iPaaS → Microsoft Copilot (MCP host) Enable Microsoft Copilot to answer what integrates with X and what is the status of INT-nnn‚ using Flowgear MCP tools backed by the live catalog, reducing swivel-chair work for architects and support. |
Enterprise Architecture | High | Later | ✓ | 40 | 2 | $8,000 | 6/12/2026, 4:45:16 PM |
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| Governed Azure OpenAI completion gatewayFlowgear iPaaS → Azure OpenAI Service Provide a single governed path for any LLM completion used in ACME automation, blocking free-form ERP writes and enforcing redaction and model policy. |
IT Architecture & Security | High | Transformation | ✓ | — | — | — | 6/12/2026, 4:42:07 PM |
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| AI summarised integration health digest to TeamsFlowgear iPaaS → Microsoft Teams Deliver a daily Teams narrative summarising integration health so business and IT leaders consume status without opening technical consoles. |
IT Operations | Medium | Transformation | ✓ | — | — | — | 5/29/2026, 10:42:21 AM |
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| ERP finance journals to data platformNetSuite ERP → Snowflake Create a finance-ready ERP data feed into the enterprise data platform. |
Finance Systems | High | Optimization | ✓ | 38 | 4 | $7,600 | 5/29/2026, 10:40:25 AM |
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| Curated analytics slice for RAG groundingSnowflake → Azure OpenAI Service Publish a nightly refresh of curated integration and order KPI facts into an embedding index so RAG and Copilot answers stay grounded in ACME-approved numbers and not internet hallucinations. |
Analytics & AI CoE | High | Optimization | ✓ | 30 | 3 | $6,000 | 5/29/2026, 10:38:23 AM |
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| Customer service tickets to ERP returnsZendesk → NetSuite ERP Create Web app to turn approved customer service return requests into governed ERP RMAs. |
Customer Service | Medium | Stabilization | ✓ | 40 | 4 | $8,000 | 5/29/2026, 10:36:43 AM |
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| Production completion to ERPMES → NetSuite ERP Synchronize production completion events from MES to NetSuite ERP to improve inventory and costing accuracy. |
Manufacturing | High | Stabilization | ✓ | 14 | 3 | $2,800 | 5/29/2026, 10:35:02 AM |
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| ERP inventory and pricing to ShopifyNetSuite ERP → Shopify Plus Publish accurate stock and selling price from ERP to Shopify to improve conversion and margin control. |
Digital Commerce | High | Quick Wins | ✓ | 15 | 2 | $3,000 | 5/29/2026, 10:33:15 AM |
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| Operational events to data platformFlowgear iPaaS → Snowflake Implement operational events to data platform to improve the monitoring and kpi reporting process. |
IT Operations | Medium | Quick Wins | ✓ | 17 | 4 | $3,400 | 5/29/2026, 10:29:09 AM |
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| Automate Shopify Order to ERPShopify Plus → NetSuite ERP Replace manual rekeying and automate the flow of confirmed web orders into the ERP so ACME.co can scale digital sales without adding order capture headcount. |
Digital Commerce | High | Quick Wins | ✓ | 10 | 1 | $2,000 | 5/29/2026, 10:27:56 AM |
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| HR master to payrollWorkday → ADP Payroll Provide a governed HR-to-payroll integration so employee changes reach payroll accurately and on time. |
HR Operations | High | Later | ✓ | 70 | 4 | $14,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:21:49 PM |
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| 3PL tracking back to channels3PL TMS → Shopify Plus Implement 3pl tracking back to channels to improve the customer shipment visibility process. |
Logistics | Medium | Later | ✓ | 35 | 3 | $7,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:21:39 PM |
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| ERP shipment to 3PLNetSuite ERP → 3PL TMS Implement erp shipment to 3pl to improve the carrier allocation and dispatch process. |
Logistics | Medium | Later | ✓ | 30 | 3 | $6,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:21:32 PM |
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| ERP work orders to MESNetSuite ERP → MES Implement erp work orders to mes to improve the production planning execution process. |
Manufacturing | Medium | Later | ✓ | 75 | 6 | $15,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:21:21 PM |
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| Sales opportunities to ERP quotesSalesforce CRM → NetSuite ERP Implement sales opportunities to erp quotes to improve the sales quoting and handoff process. |
Sales Operations | Medium | Later | ✓ | 80 | 4 | $16,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:21:12 PM |
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| Supplier PO exchangeNetSuite ERP → Supplier EDI Gateway Implement supplier po exchange to improve the supplier collaboration process. |
Procurement | Medium | Later | ✓ | 95 | 5 | $19,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:21:04 PM |
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| Product master to channelsAkeneo PIM → Shopify Plus Implement product master to channels to improve the product launch and maintenance process. |
Product Data Team | Medium | Later | ✓ | 65 | 5 | $13,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:20:57 PM |
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| Data platform to BISnowflake → Power BI Implement data platform to bi to improve the management reporting process. |
Analytics | Low | Later | ✓ | 16 | 1 | $3,200 | 5/27/2026, 5:20:52 PM |
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| ERP orders to warehouseNetSuite ERP → WMS Strengthen the live ERP-to-WMS order fulfillment integration with better monitoring and controls. |
Supply Chain | High | Later | ✓ | 40 | 9 | $8,000 | 5/27/2026, 5:20:43 PM |
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| Warehouse shipment confirmation to ERPWMS → NetSuite ERP Implement warehouse shipment confirmation to erp to improve the shipment confirmation process. |
Supply Chain | Low | Later | ✓ | 45 | 7 | $9,000 | 5/27/2026, 1:46:01 PM |
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| Marketing leads to CRMHubSpot Marketing → Salesforce CRM Implement marketing leads to crm to improve the marketing to sales conversion process. |
Marketing Operations | Low | Later | ✓ | 30 | 2 | $6,000 | 5/27/2026, 1:45:40 PM |
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| ERP cash forecast to banking portalNetSuite ERP → Banking Platform Introduce a secure ERP-to-bank payment workflow with governance and traceability. |
Treasury | Medium | Later | ✓ | 58 | 2 | $11,600 | 5/27/2026, 12:40:11 PM |
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Integration Business Case
Build out the value story for a planned integration in a structured way. Capture the current process, the future process, expected benefits, delivery scope, and the commercial or operational value so the business case can be discussed and refined as part of the workbench journey.
Create Business Case
Complete the standard fields below to describe the process, value, and rationale for this planned integration.
Current Process
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Future Process
Scroll to see all steps
This is meant to fast track the integration build and provide a good starting point underlined by build principles and guidelines. Some adjustments might still be needed.
Generate a controlled build prompt
Assemble the minimum integration-build context from this business case, its linked catalog item, matching rules, and applied principles. Add any missing technical details before giving the prompt to Flowgear MCP Builder.
Integration Architecture Domains
Use this page to assess maturity across the architecture domains that make integration scalable, governed, secure, supportable, and AI-ready over time. Rate each domain from an integration-architecture perspective and add notes for gaps, priorities, or next actions. Suggested capabilities are optional prompts only.
Domain maturity spider diagram
Each domain score is the average of its task ratings. Lower scores indicate stronger need for foundational work.
Focus heatmap
The heatmap highlights the weakest domains first so you can see where to focus the roadmap.
Technology Architecture
- Standardize CI/CD and release promotion
- Define secret/certificate management
Operations & Support
- Track recurring failure patterns and technical debt
- Implement centralized monitoring and alerting
AI Architecture
- Identify AI use cases and business value
- Define grounding and enterprise context patterns
Governance & Operating Model
- Define integration governance model
- Stand up architecture/design review checkpoints
Information & Data Architecture
- Design data validation and quality rules
- Create exception management and reconciliation patterns
Integration Architecture
- Establish canonical error handling and retries
- Define idempotency and duplicate prevention rules
Security Architecture
- Define security review gates for new integrations
- Include platform hardening and vulnerability response
Application Architecture
- Identify redundant or fragile point-to-point links
- Decide what should remain file-based vs modernized
Delivery & Migration Planning
- Identify prerequisite platform/governance tasks
- Plan coexistence between legacy and target-state patterns
Business Architecture
- Identify critical journeys and bottlenecks
- Rank initiatives by business value, urgency, and feasibility
Business Architecture
Align integration work to business capabilities, pain points, value streams, and measurable outcomes.
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Define business drivers and integration goals i
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Prioritize business capabilities and processes i
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Identify critical journeys and bottlenecks i
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Rank initiatives by business value, urgency, and feasibility i
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Define target operating outcomes and KPIs i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Information & Data Architecture
Define ownership, data quality, identifiers, transformations, auditability, and exception handling so integration does not amplify bad data.
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Define master data ownership by domain i
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Document source-to-target mappings i
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Design data validation and quality rules i
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Create exception management and reconciliation patterns i
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Define audit trail and lineage requirements i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Application Architecture
Rationalize the application landscape and classify how each system should interact based on role, constraints, and strategic value.
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Build and maintain an application catalog i
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Classify systems by role and strategic importance i
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Document interaction patterns between systems i
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Identify redundant or fragile point-to-point links i
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Decide what should remain file-based vs modernized i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Integration Architecture
Set the target integration style and the reusable patterns, standards, and controls that every integration should follow.
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Define target-state integration principles i
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Standardize integration patterns and templates i
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Establish canonical error handling and retries i
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Define idempotency and duplicate prevention rules i
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Create API and event design standards i
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Reduce brittle point-to-point links through reusable mediation i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Technology Architecture
Define the platform capabilities, environments, deployment model, resilience, and observability foundation needed to run the integration estate.
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Define target platform services and deployment model i
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Design environment topology and DR approach i
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Standardize CI/CD and release promotion i
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Define secret/certificate management i
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Establish workload sizing and performance baselines i
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Design observability, storage, and retention architecture i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Security Architecture
Treat security as a dedicated workstream covering identity, secrets, encryption, auditability, controls, and platform hardening.
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Define authentication and authorization standards i
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Centralize secret and key management i
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Classify sensitive data and required controls i
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Add audit logging and evidence retention i
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Define security review gates for new integrations i
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Include platform hardening and vulnerability response i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
AI Architecture
Define how AI capabilities are grounded, governed, orchestrated, and operationalized across the Flowgear estate.
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Identify AI use cases and business value i
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Define grounding and enterprise context patterns i
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Design MCP server and tool exposure patterns i
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Establish AI safety, approval, and policy controls i
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Add AI observability and audit trails i
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Define Flowgear AI runtime capabilities and patterns i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Governance & Operating Model
Create the ownership model, standards, forums, decision rights, and support accountability needed to keep integration delivery controlled and repeatable.
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Define integration governance model i
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Stand up architecture/design review checkpoints i
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Create standards, templates, and minimum documentation i
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Assign domain ownership and support accountability i
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Define SLA, escalation, and change control processes i
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Establish portfolio prioritization and intake management i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Operations & Support
Make integrations supportable with monitoring, alerts, runbooks, controls, dashboards, and trend-based improvement.
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Implement centralized monitoring and alerting i
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Define support runbooks and triage processes i
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Add reconciliation and control reports i
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Track recurring failure patterns and technical debt i
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Measure SLA, throughput, backlog, and error rates i
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Create proactive health checks for endpoints and dependencies i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Delivery & Migration Planning
Turn strategy into executable waves, dependencies, transition states, and measurable outcomes instead of a flat project list.
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Define roadmap waves and transition states i
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Separate quick wins from foundational work i
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Sequence by business value, risk, and dependency i
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Identify prerequisite platform/governance tasks i
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Plan coexistence between legacy and target-state patterns i
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Define measurable outcomes for each wave i
Suggested capabilities (optional)
Rules Library
See all integration rules, behavior settings, and ownership captured across catalog-driven flows in one place.
| Integration | Flow | Catalog IDs | Type | Retry | Failure Mode | Owner | Rules | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Order create / update | Shopify Plus → NetSuite ERP | INT-001 | order orchestration | idempotent retries with dead-letter queue | hold and notify commerce ops | Digital Commerce / IT Integration |
Orders require customer, inventory and tax validation before ERP creationUse business key idempotency on order number and source channelEscalate payment-captured but order-not-created exceptions within 15 minutes |
Planned | Needs customer, tax, shipping and discount rules aligned before go-live. |
| Stock and price publish | NetSuite ERP → Shopify Plus | INT-002 | master data publish | delta republish with watermark | continue and raise stock discrepancy alert | Digital Commerce / ERP |
Inventory publishes must respect sellable stock logic by channelPrice updates must be traceable to source price list and effective date |
Planned | Requires sellable inventory logic by warehouse and price list selection. |
| Product publish | Akeneo PIM → Shopify Plus | INT-003 | product syndication | retry per SKU with validation queue | reject invalid SKU and notify product data team | Product Data Team |
Reject products missing mandatory web attributesDo not publish rich media until asset URLs are verified |
In Progress | Variant attributes, rich media and channel-specific descriptions still being standardized. |
| Won opportunity handoff | Salesforce CRM → NetSuite ERP | INT-004 | sales handoff workflow | manual requeue after validation | stop and request sales ops correction | Sales Operations |
Only approved and closed-won opportunities may create ERP quotesCustomer account must exist or be created under governed onboarding rules |
Planned | Need business approval for item master and price-book alignment. |
| Lead sync | HubSpot Marketing → Salesforce CRM | INT-005 | lead sync | automatic retry | continue with duplicate warning | Marketing Operations |
Deduplicate by email plus company when availablePreserve campaign attribution and original lead source |
Live | Deduplication rules work but campaign attribution needs refinement. |
| RMA initiation | Zendesk → NetSuite ERP | INT-006 | service workflow | queue for support review | stop and notify service desk | Customer Service |
RMA creation requires validated item, warranty status and return reasonCredit-related returns must route to finance approval first |
Planned | Return reason mapping and finance approval thresholds required. |
| Finished goods posting | MES → NetSuite ERP | INT-007 | manufacturing event ingestion | safe retry by production event id | hold production posting and alert plant support | Manufacturing IT |
Production completion messages must be idempotent by work-order operationLot, serial and scrap quantities must balance before ERP posting |
In Progress | Requires lot, serial and scrap handling decisions. |
| Work order release | NetSuite ERP → MES | INT-008 | work order release | retry with acknowledgment check | stop release and alert planning | Manufacturing Planning |
Only firmed and released work orders may be published to MESEngineering revision must match the effective BOM version |
Planned | Routing, BOM and revision synchronization must be finalized. |
| Fulfillment request | NetSuite ERP → WMS | INT-009 | fulfillment orchestration | automatic retry with reconciliation | continue with urgent alert | Supply Chain |
Warehouse requests must include shipping method, warehouse and service levelPrevent duplicate release of the same order line set |
Live | Live flow exists but monitoring and replay controls are still too manual. |
| Shipment / pick confirmation | WMS → NetSuite ERP | INT-010 | shipment confirmation | retry with duplicate protection | hold invoice release until reconciled | Supply Chain |
Partial shipments must preserve open quantity and backorder stateShipment confirmations must reconcile carton counts and weights |
Live | Need stronger reconciliation for partial shipments and backorders. |
| Transport booking | NetSuite ERP → 3PL TMS | INT-011 | transport booking | retry until acknowledged | fallback to manual dispatch queue | Logistics |
Freight booking must map carrier service code and delivery promiseLate booking acknowledgements must alert logistics coordinator |
Planned | Carrier service codes and freight charge model still under review. |
| Tracking update | 3PL TMS → Shopify Plus | INT-012 | tracking event publish | retry by tracking event id | continue and flag stale tracking | Logistics / CX |
Normalize carrier event codes before customer-facing publishDo not overwrite delivered status with lower-priority events |
Planned | Need tracking event normalization and late-delivery alerting. |
| Employee master sync | Workday → ADP Payroll | INT-013 | employee master sync | stage and replay after HR correction | stop affected employee only | HR Operations |
Employee changes must validate company, cost centre and pay groupTerminate or suspend records must honor payroll cutoff rules |
Planned | Pay group, cost center and legal entity mapping still incomplete. |
| Journal and subledger export | NetSuite ERP → Snowflake | INT-014 | finance extract | incremental rerun by posting period | continue and flag data quality issue | Finance Systems |
Journal exports must include lineage to source transaction and posting statusDo not publish unapproved journals into finance reporting models |
In Progress | Need chart-of-accounts hierarchy and posting status rules aligned. |
| Operational telemetry feed | Flowgear iPaaS → Snowflake | INT-015 | observability telemetry | buffer and replay | continue with monitoring gap alert | IT Operations |
Capture workflow status, latency, retries and exception categoriesProtect sensitive payload data before publishing telemetry |
Planned | Decide retention windows, KPI ownership and cost controls for telemetry. |
| Curated model refresh | Snowflake → Power BI | INT-016 | analytics refresh | scheduled refresh rerun | continue with dashboard freshness alert | Analytics |
Certified datasets must use agreed business definitionsRefresh failures older than 2 hours require analytics escalation |
Live | Dashboards are live but metric definitions vary across departments. |
| PO outbound / ASN inbound | NetSuite ERP → Supplier EDI Gateway | INT-017 | partner B2B exchange | await functional acknowledgment | hold partner transmission and notify procurement | Procurement |
Trading partner routing depends on supplier profile and document standardFunctional acknowledgements must be logged and reconciled |
Planned | Trading partner onboarding and message standards need phased rollout. |
| Payment file and bank response | NetSuite ERP → Banking Platform | INT-018 | payment workflow | manual controlled replay | stop and require treasury review | Treasury |
Payment file release requires approval workflow and segregation of dutiesBank return files must update payment status with full audit trail |
Planned | Approval workflow, signatory limits and return-file handling required. |
| MCP tool discovery & invocation | Flowgear iPaaS → Microsoft Copilot (MCP host) | INT-019 | MCP tool host | exponential backoff; surface tool denial to user | fail closed; log security event | Enterprise Architecture / Security |
Only Entra ID–authenticated Copilot agents may invoke MCP toolsTools are read-only unless explicitly approved in the MCP manifestLog tool name, correlation ID, and principal; never log full LLM prompts containing PIIRate-limit per user and per tool; block anomalous invocation patterns |
Planned | MCP tool contracts in review; Entra app registration pending. Pilot with Architecture + Integration COE only. |
| Policy-wrapped chat completion | Flowgear iPaaS → Azure OpenAI Service | INT-020 | LLM gateway | bounded retries; circuit breaker on 429/5xx | return structured error to workflow; no silent drop | IT Architecture & Security |
All prompts pass through PII redaction / content filter before Azure OpenAISystem prompts are versioned and stored in Flowgear libraryâ€â€no ad-hoc production stringsCompletions may not trigger ERP write APIs; downstream actions require explicit workflow stepsLog token usage per integration and per department for chargeback |
Planned | Security sign-off required before any production traffic. Sandbox endpoint live for prompt harness tests. |
| Daily ops channel post | Flowgear iPaaS → Microsoft Teams | INT-021 | scheduled notification | retry post; escalate to email if Teams unavailable | queue for manual send | IT Operations |
Digest must state data : timestamp from Snowflake extractsHuman reviewer optional in pilot; flagged incidents always include raw metric linksNo customer PII in digest body : aggregates and integration IDs only |
Planned | Channel naming and audience (global vs regional) to be decided with Comms. |
| Embedding index refresh | Snowflake → Azure OpenAI Service | INT-022 | embedding pipeline | checkpoint by batch id | halt and alert data steward | Analytics & AI CoE |
Only approved Snowflake views in the RAG projection listEmbeddings refreshed after nightly dbt/ELT success signalVersion embedding model; document change in catalog release notes |
Planned | Data steward approval needed for each column in RAG projection. Start with integration KPI mart only. |
Principles & Guidelines
Use a practical library of well-known integration principles and add your own organization-specific principles. Apply them to the project so they can guide roadmap tasks, architecture decisions, and design standards.
Select built-in principles, add custom principles, and keep the applied set in the project JSON.
Recommended integration principles
These built-in principles cover business alignment, data, application, integration, security, operations, governance, and modernization.
Integrations must support business capabilities
Statement: Design integration around business outcomes and operating processes, not only around technical connectivity.
Why it matters: This keeps delivery anchored to value streams like order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, hire-to-retire, and customer service.
How to apply it: Tie each major integration to a business capability, pain point, KPI, or control objective before design starts.
Prioritize by value, urgency, and feasibility
Statement: Sequence work according to business value, urgency, and delivery feasibility rather than whichever interface is loudest.
Why it matters: This prevents roadmap sprawl and helps quick wins and foundational items land in the right order.
How to apply it: Use the roadmap manager to score work items and phase them deliberately from quick wins into transformation.
Define a system of record for each domain
Statement: Every master data domain should have a clear owning system and direction of truth.
Why it matters: Unclear ownership causes reconciliation pain, duplicate updates, and low trust in integrated data.
How to apply it: Document domain ownership for customer, supplier, product, employee, pricing, finance, and other key domains before scaling the integration estate.
Validate data at integration boundaries
Statement: Data quality rules belong at handoff points, not only downstream after issues surface.
Why it matters: Integration failure is often data failure, so quality checks and exception handling must be designed in.
How to apply it: Standardize mandatory-field checks, format validation, reconciliation, and exception ownership where data crosses system boundaries.
Use the right pattern for the right problem
Statement: Not every integration should be built the same way.
Why it matters: APIs, events, orchestration, batch, file transfer, and human workflow each suit different scenarios.
How to apply it: Classify each use case and select the delivery pattern intentionally instead of defaulting to a single style.
Reduce brittle point-to-point dependencies
Statement: Prefer reusable mediation, orchestration, or services over hard-coded one-off links.
Why it matters: Point-to-point growth increases coupling, support overhead, and change risk across the estate.
How to apply it: Use Flowgear capabilities and shared services where multiple interfaces repeat the same logic, transforms, or controls.
Design for idempotency and safe retries
Statement: Critical integrations must tolerate retries and replay without creating duplicates or inconsistent outcomes.
Why it matters: Failures happen. Safe retry behavior is what makes them recoverable.
How to apply it: Adopt message identifiers, business keys, checkpoints, and duplicate prevention controls as standard design rules.
Make integrations observable and supportable
Statement: Monitoring, alerting, operational logging, and runbooks are part of the solution, not optional extras.
Why it matters: A technically correct flow still fails the organization if support cannot detect, diagnose, and recover issues quickly.
How to apply it: Include technical alerts, business alerts, dashboards, reconciliation, and support runbooks in every important integration design.
Secure system-to-system access by default
Statement: Use least privilege, controlled secrets, encryption, and auditable access for every integration.
Why it matters: Integration platforms can expose high-value business data and privileged paths between systems.
How to apply it: Standardize service identity, vault-based secret management, encryption, audit logging, and security review gates.
Use lightweight but real governance
Statement: Standards, design review checkpoints, documentation minimums, and ownership must be explicit.
Why it matters: Without governance, integration delivery becomes fast in the short term but chaotic and expensive over time.
How to apply it: Define minimum design artifacts, ownership, review forums, approval paths, and support accountability for every significant integration.
Modernize selectively where value justifies it
Statement: Do not modernize everything at once; preserve fit-for-purpose patterns and target the highest-value upgrades first.
Why it matters: Selective modernization protects delivery capacity and avoids replacing stable low-value patterns prematurely.
How to apply it: Use the roadmap and flight plan to stage modernization behind stabilization, standardization, and business value evidence.
Add custom principle
Applied principles
These are the principles currently active for this project and ready to guide roadmap and architecture work.
Custom principles library
Store organization-specific guidelines alongside the built-in Flowgear integration principles.
No integration should launch without an operating owner
Statement: Every production integration must have a named business owner, support path and agreed success measure before launch.
Why it matters: Technology ownership alone does not close operational gaps when data or process exceptions occur.
How to apply it: Capture business owner, support team, KPI and escalation path in the catalog and release checklist.
Prefer reusable mediation before bespoke flow logic
Statement: Shared transformations, validations and controls should be built once and reused where possible.
Why it matters: This reduces cost of change and improves support consistency across the landscape.
How to apply it: Turn repeated patterns into reusable Flowgear assets, templates and runbooks.
Expose business-visible control points
Statement: Important operational flows should be observable through business-facing dashboards or workflow queues, not only technical logs.
Why it matters: Operations teams need fast, accountable resolution without waiting for deep technical investigation.
How to apply it: Use Flowgear monitoring, web apps and exception queues to surface actionable status and ownership.
MCP tools are allow-listed and read-only by default
Statement: Every Flowgear-exposed MCP tool must declare scope (read/write), data classes touched, and approval tier. Write-capable tools require human-in-the-loop or workflow gate.
Why it matters: Model Context Protocol increases productivity but expands attack surface; default-deny prevents Copilot from becoming an uncontrolled integration backdoor.
How to apply it: Maintain a published tool catalog, red-team quarterly, log invocations with correlation IDs, and pair with Entra conditional access.
Customer-facing or financial AI outputs require human review
Statement: No fully automated LLM response may be shown to customers or drive payment/payroll actions without a defined human approval or policy engine step.
Why it matters: ACME operates in regulated and high-trust markets; reputational and compliance risk outweighs minor latency savings.
How to apply it: Use Flowgear workflow for approval queues; store reviewer identity and outcome in audit trail.
AI and MCP traffic is observable like any integration
Statement: MCP calls, LLM token usage, denials, and errors must emit metrics and traces compatible with the integration control tower (INT-015).
Why it matters: If AI is production infrastructure, it must be supportable with the same rigor as order or payroll flows.
How to apply it: Dashboards in Power BI: tool latency, error rate, top consumers, cost burn & reviewed monthly in ops forum.
Generative answers must cite governed retrieval sources
Statement: Copilot or internal bots answering ACME operational questions must use INT-022 (or successor) curated indexes : not only model parametric knowledge.
Why it matters: Prevents confident wrong answers about stock, revenue, or integration status.
How to apply it: Enforce retrieval-first prompts; display source links; block answers when retrieval confidence is low.
Roadmap Task Manager
Build a phased delivery roadmap by pulling in architecture tasks and integration catalog items, then manage them as delivery tasks with owners, dates, priorities, and status across Quick Wins, Stabilization, Optimization, and Transformation.
Bring in architecture tasks
Select assessment tasks and turn them into scheduled roadmap items.
Define business drivers and integration goals
Prioritize business capabilities and processes
Identify critical journeys and bottlenecks
Rank initiatives by business value, urgency, and feasibility
Define target operating outcomes and KPIs
Define master data ownership by domain
Document source-to-target mappings
Design data validation and quality rules
Create exception management and reconciliation patterns
Define audit trail and lineage requirements
Build and maintain an application catalog
Classify systems by role and strategic importance
Document interaction patterns between systems
Identify redundant or fragile point-to-point links
Decide what should remain file-based vs modernized
Define target-state integration principles
Standardize integration patterns and templates
Establish canonical error handling and retries
Define idempotency and duplicate prevention rules
Create API and event design standards
Reduce brittle point-to-point links through reusable mediation
Define target platform services and deployment model
Design environment topology and DR approach
Standardize CI/CD and release promotion
Define secret/certificate management
Establish workload sizing and performance baselines
Design observability, storage, and retention architecture
Define authentication and authorization standards
Centralize secret and key management
Classify sensitive data and required controls
Add audit logging and evidence retention
Define security review gates for new integrations
Include platform hardening and vulnerability response
Identify AI use cases and business value
Define grounding and enterprise context patterns
Design MCP server and tool exposure patterns
Establish AI safety, approval, and policy controls
Add AI observability and audit trails
Define Flowgear AI runtime capabilities and patterns
Define integration governance model
Stand up architecture/design review checkpoints
Create standards, templates, and minimum documentation
Assign domain ownership and support accountability
Define SLA, escalation, and change control processes
Establish portfolio prioritization and intake management
Implement centralized monitoring and alerting
Define support runbooks and triage processes
Add reconciliation and control reports
Track recurring failure patterns and technical debt
Measure SLA, throughput, backlog, and error rates
Create proactive health checks for endpoints and dependencies
Define roadmap waves and transition states
Separate quick wins from foundational work
Sequence by business value, risk, and dependency
Identify prerequisite platform/governance tasks
Plan coexistence between legacy and target-state patterns
Define measurable outcomes for each wave
Bring in catalog items
Select imported integrations from the catalog and add them to your roadmap phases.
Shopify orders to ERP
ERP inventory and pricing to Shopify
Product master to channels
Sales opportunities to ERP quotes
Marketing leads to CRM
Customer service tickets to ERP returns
Production completion to ERP
ERP work orders to MES
ERP orders to warehouse
Warehouse shipment confirmation to ERP
ERP shipment to 3PL
3PL tracking back to channels
HR master to payroll
ERP finance journals to data platform
Operational events to data platform
Data platform to BI
Supplier PO exchange
ERP cash forecast to banking portal
MCP catalog & workflow tools for Copilot
Governed Azure OpenAI completion gateway
AI summarised integration health digest to Teams
Curated analytics slice for RAG grounding
Roadmap board
Track the execution mix across your roadmap stages.
Quick Wins
Fast, visible delivery items that create control, confidence, and early value.
Stabilization
Standards, governance, supportability, and operational control improvements.
Optimization
Workflow and delivery improvements that reduce manual effort and improve reuse.
Transformation
Larger modernization moves toward API-led, scalable, resilient future-state architecture.
Flowgear Budget Planning and Cost Estimate
Use the Flowgear tick box, effort estimate, and concurrent flows on the catalog to size the expected Flowgear plan as items move into roadmap stages.
| Phase | Effort | Implementation Cost | Required Subscription |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick Wins | 90 hrs | $18,000 | Standard $2,690/mo |
| Stabilization | 29 hrs | $5,800 | Standard $2,690/mo |
| Optimization | 138 hrs | $27,600 | Professional $4,290/mo |
| Transformation | 153 hrs | $30,600 | Professional $4,290/mo |
| Total | 410 hrs | $82,000 | Subscription grows with cumulative flows |
Roadmap task register
Set delivery dates, ownership, and prioritization so the roadmap becomes a live project task manager.
| Roadmap item | Source ref | Phase | Status | Owner | Start | Target | Completed | Value | Urgency | Feasibility | Priority | Dependencies | Notes | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Catalog integration Harden live ERP-to-WMS orchestrationImprove replay, monitoring, reconciliation and exception visibility for the live fulfillment flow. | INT-009 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Deliver Shopify order orchestrationImplement governed order capture from Shopify to ERP with validation and exception handling. | INT-001 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Publish trusted stock and price to commerceStabilize stock and price publishing from ERP to Shopify using delta logic and alerts. | INT-002 | |||||||||||||
Architecture task Define integration standards and minimum design packEstablish the templates, standards and review checklist that every integration must follow. | governance | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Integrate MES completion events into ERPImplement manufacturing completion event ingestion with lot, serial and scrap controls. | INT-007 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Implement HR-to-payroll master data syncCreate controlled employee data handoff from Workday to ADP payroll. | INT-013 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Stand up finance data feed to SnowflakeCreate the controlled finance extraction and lineage pattern into the data platform. | INT-014 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Launch supplier EDI exchangeRoll out outbound PO and inbound ASN orchestration with trading partner onboarding. | INT-017 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Implement treasury payment workflowIntroduce secure approval-led ERP-to-bank payment integration and return processing. | INT-018 | |||||||||||||
Architecture task Create integration control tower dashboardsPublish cross-flow dashboards for status, SLA, exception volumes, replay activity and business KPI overlays. | ||||||||||||||
Catalog integration Pilot Flowgear MCP tools for CopilotImplement read-only MCP toolset (catalog search, item detail, run status) with Entra auth and audit export. | INT-019 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Deploy governed Azure OpenAI gateway via FlowgearProduction completion path with PII redaction, model allow-list, and structured loggingâ€â€no direct ERP writes. | INT-020 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Stand up RAG grounding mart & embedding refreshCurated Snowflake views for integration KPIs; nightly embedding pipeline to Azure AI Search. | INT-022 | |||||||||||||
Catalog integration Launch Teams integration health digestDaily AI summarised digest using gateway (INT-020) and telemetry from Snowflake. | INT-021 | |||||||||||||
Architecture task Establish AI & integration governance forumMonthly forum for Architecture, Security, Legal, and AI CoE to review MCP tools, new prompts, and incident learnings. | ||||||||||||||
Architecture task Define business drivers and integration goalsTie each integration initiative to a named business driver, the affected process, the expected benefit, and a measurable KPI such as turnaround time, manual effort reduction, or error reduction. | business | |||||||||||||
Architecture task Prioritize business capabilities and processesList the core value streams and capabilities, score them by pain, value, urgency, and feasibility, then use that prioritization to decide what the roadmap tackles first. | business |
Flight Plan
See the high-level delivery plan over time. This screen turns your roadmap items into a phased timeline so you can see what is due when, how work is sequenced across Quick Wins through Transformation, and where the delivery pressure points sit.
Progress Tracker
Overall delivery progress is calculated only from tasks marked Completed. The percentage is completed roadmap tasks divided by total roadmap tasks, shown on a 100% scale.
Delivery timeline
Each bar is a roadmap item, grouped by roadmap phase and placed between its start and target dates.
Delivery storyline
This explains how the plan flows from near-term quick wins into stabilization, optimization, and transformation.
Upcoming and overdue items
Use this as a quick operational view of what needs attention next.
2026-05-30
2026-05-16
2026-06-20
2026-06-27
2026-07-04
2026-08-08
2026-08-14
2026-08-28
2026-09-18
2026-09-19
Phase delivery signals
These summaries help explain how delivery is distributed across the phases.