"Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)"
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the process of linking applications such as Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Business Intelligence, and Integrated Collaboration together in order to realize financial and operational competitive advantages.
EAI intends to go beyond the simple goal of linking applications, and attempts to enable new and innovative ways of leveraging organizational knowledge to create further competitive advantages for the enterprise.
When different systems can’t share their data effectively, they create information bottlenecks that require human intervention in the form of decision making or data entry. With a properly deployed EAI architecture, organizations are able to focus most of their efforts on their value creating core competencies instead of focusing on workflow management.