Radovan Slíž · WorkSys.Space · 25/08/2026
The most expensive integration looks like the cheapest one at first
A direct link between two systems is quick and cheap. The fifth direct link is a web nobody wants to touch. When a shared foundation pays off, and when it honestly does not.
The most expensive integration I know looks like the cheapest one at first.
It always works the same way. A company needs to connect two systems, say production and the warehouse. A direct link is quick, cheap and it works. A year later energy monitoring arrives, so it connects to both. Then the attendance system, then maintenance, then reporting for management. Every single decision was correct and cheap. The sum of those decisions is a web that, after a few years, nobody wants to touch.
How you recognise the web
You recognise it by the sentences spoken around it. Better not to touch this one, it was built by a supplier who no longer works with us. If we replace the warehouse system, we have to redo four links. Nobody knows exactly what that replacement would break.
You see it best the moment a company decides to replace one of the systems. Replacing a warehouse system is a big project in itself. In the web, though, it comes bundled with an inventory of every link that pointed at the old warehouse. Production read stock levels from it, maintenance wrote into it, reporting assembled management figures from it. Each of those links was custom-built by someone years ago, and some of those people are no longer with the company. Replacing one system suddenly becomes a project about four systems. And that tends to be the moment the replacement gets postponed, sometimes by years.
The opposite path
The opposite path is one foundation that every system connects to once. That is exactly how the WorkSys.Space platform is built. A new thing connects to the foundation, not to five old systems. Replacing one part touches one link, not four.
And now the less pleasant part that suppliers like to leave out: this path is slower at the start and demands more thinking ahead. The first connection through a foundation costs more than the first direct link. It wins only from the third or fourth system onwards. So if a company knows for certain it will stay with two systems forever, a direct link is honestly fine.
I just have not met a company in all these years that stayed with two systems.
Related on this site:How the platform connects existing systems