Systems Integration For Digital Transformation

PROJECT BACKGROUND

IMI Precision Engineering (part of IMI plc) are a world leader in motion and fluid control technologies. IMI develop innovative precision engineering components all over the world. This large-scale, fast-moving and competitive environment has led IMI to pursue a Digital Transformation in which they have chosen “best of breed” computer systems for its operations.

THE CHALLENGE

The “best of breed” approach to Digital Transformation means that IMI has a need for their disparate computer systems to communicate information in a bespoke manner. For example, a package dispatch system may contain useful information about the progress of a delivery for a customer, whilst information relating to the customer’s account is held in a different system. These systems need to exchange information and integrate to give a single view of the truth to IMI staff.

This process is known as systems integration and is extremely important in order to allow information from different systems to communicate.

THE SOLUTION

McKenna Consultants have created the Digital Edge Platform for IMI. This is a cloud-based platform which means that the maintenance overhead is very low. The Digital Edge Platform facilitates systems integration by plugging into IMI’s different computer systems and flowing information between them. The solution provides an invisible (though technically complex) systems integration to give the most current view of key data available.

DELIVERY

An Agile approach is best for this kind of systems development as the technical requirements for each piece of software at IMI are significantly different, which can lead to a complex project management as a set of changing integration requirements are needed to be met. We found using an Agile approach meant that we could meet the requirements head-on as and when they changed and were able to do just that in order to deliver the platform.

Should you wish to discuss systems integration services further, or your own digital platform requirements with McKenna Consultants, please contact us to see how we could help your business via our bespoke digital services.

AI-POWERED CLOUD MONITORING: MASS

Building on our long-standing partnership with IMI, McKenna Consultants developed MASS (McKenna AI Semi-autonomous System) — an Azure Alert Intelligence Agent built specifically for IMI’s cloud infrastructure.

THE CHALLENGE

Cloud infrastructure generates hundreds of alerts. Each alert previously required an engineer to manually investigate — logging into multiple Azure portals, correlating logs, metrics and application traces, and writing up findings. This manual process was time-consuming and pulled engineers away from development work.

THE SOLUTION

MASS monitors IMI’s Azure infrastructure alerts 24/7. When an alert fires, MASS autonomously:

• Correlates logs, metrics and even source code across multiple Azure services
• Investigates root causes without human intervention
• Delivers a comprehensive investigation report to a Slack channel within minutes

The entire workflow — from alert to actionable report — happens autonomously. A human reviews the output and approves next steps, keeping IMI’s team in control whilst eliminating the manual investigation overhead.

IMPACT

MASS represents a fundamental shift from reactive to proactive infrastructure management. Alert investigation that previously took an engineer 30-60 minutes now completes autonomously in minutes, with the engineer only needing to review the findings and approve next steps. This human-in-the-loop approach ensures quality and governance whilst dramatically reducing response times.