It wasn’t all that long ago that business operations were uber-centralized. Huge Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as SAP and Oracle were the foundational elements of organization business processes. So, companies normally were left with products from one of these devoted vendors.
Because these systems were monolithic, everything was intricately integrated. Whether the integration was accurate, that’s another story.
That was then, and this is now.
Today, look at the data-driven operations and processes that are taking place in your company, you’ll find something much different and much more chaotic. Legacy ERP systems remain at the center of organizations, of course. But now, in many organizations, mission-critical business processes are distributed among a plethora of applications – if not more. The business landscape has completely altered. The business expectations have not!
Fragmented Technological Landscape is the Business Story of Our Time
Organizations need to manage a growing array of data streams and applications to connect with customers faster and deliver customer experiences (CXs). As every business becomes more software-driven out of necessity, users must keep up with all of these emerging technology trends, while also focusing on streamlining their fundamental businesses and delivering value to their customers. This calls for a number of technical skills needed to keep up with mind-numbing complexity. It’s difficult for organizations to find and hire the right people since technological solutions continue to mature and change.
How can you make a wise attempt to make sense of this technology fragmentation and get everything working together smoothly to facilitate positive outcomes?
Related White Paper: Reimagine your Customer Data Integration
Reimagined data integration solutions can act as the guiding star here. These solutions can unify a technically fragmented world. Here are three critical steps to making this happen:
Get Your Data Right
Data is the wheels of the modern business world. And the amount of data inside our organizations is increasing each day as we add new applications. That creates data silos.
Because of data silos, 60 percent of data within companies is unused or just inaccessible. Oftentimes, when the data is left unused and inaccessible, an opportunity is lost. Businesses need to discover, onboard, ingest, and integrate all the data so the right people can access information to help them make the best decisions. Companies need to then use reimagined data integration solutions to manage these diverse datasets spread across heterogeneous applications to create consistency and communication across their business. Not only can that improve their ease of doing business but also facilitate faster value generation.
Connect the Data
What about those applications that organizations utilize for their technology stacks? These applications weren’t necessarily designed to function cohesively to meet business needs. Businesses often are forced to consolidate solutions together. Only they’re not leveraging lego blocks, but rather a house of cards!
A lot of organizations are using custom-coding, which is extremely expensive, time-consuming, and breaks easily.
It’s extremely important to use loosely coupled but highly aligned, data integration platforms that can accelerate business outcomes. This justifies the trend of businesses switching towards self-service-powered data integration solutions to create a fabric of connectivity that inexpensively introduces order to that messy IT landscape by eliminating data silos and extending a consistent toolset for internal and external use cases e.g. integrating vendors, suppliers, and distributors.
Enable the Data To Foster User Engagement
Delivering connected data streams requires companies to have secure access to data and providing the ability to quickly create the right user interfaces to satisfy business needs.
Businesses must empower business users and turn them into citizen integrators to drive tasks without assistance from specialized programmers. Modern data integration solutions can allow companies to create data connections in minutes — not months.
Finding a solution that takes care of all these points in mind can help you drive your business forward. Not only can it enable business users to create connections but also deliver on the needs of customers for delightful experiences and revenue growth.