What started as a buzzword two decades ago, digital transformation is a mainstream phenomenon in the digital age with every company making efforts to transform the way they do business and achieve desired outcomes.
In fact, statistics say that digitally transformed organizations across the world will contribute a wealth of about USD 53.3 trillion by 2023 or in other words more than half of the world’s GDP. Despite the fact the impact is so huge, many businesses fail to drive their transformation initiatives successfully.
But what does digital transformation really mean?
At heart, it means restructuring technology and workflow to prioritize data. Before the digital age, businesses had to rely on paper-based processes or custom coding to interpret data from partner ecosystems including, suppliers, retailers, customers, and other service vendors. Today, however, it’s possible to design a connected environment that freely shares disparate data among different departments and ecosystem strata, ensuring decision-makers to always have access to as much information as possible. Data integration is therefore one of the important drivers of digital transformation.
Simply put, as decision-makers have access to all the information, their ability to make fact-based decisions increases by leaps and bounds. Data integration enables that: it allows users to consolidate all kinds of data (structured, semi-structured, and unstructured) for faster insights delivery and ultimately decision-making. Let’s see how data integration enables organizations to drive their digital transformation initiatives.
Why is Integration Key to Digital Transformation?
One of the biggest mistakes that the majority of companies make with their approach is ruling out the importance of data integration. While digital platforms allow businesses to streamline operations and make things easier for different departments, operating them in silos will impact an organization as a whole. Data integration has a major role to play here.
Data integration enables organizations to create data connections and integrate new customers – at the speed of business. It facilitates data exchange between different departments, reducing the problems of data silos and improving the quality of insights. Businesses can leverage these quality insights to make impactful decisions and deliver delightful CXs.
On top of enhanced visibility and improved access to data, data integration also improves speed and efficiency. It enables users to gain access to information in real-time. When data is updated, users need not wait for hours or days to gain access to these numbers. This speeds up processing and also allows users to garner insightful information, thus accelerating decision-making and value generation. So, data integration needs to be the priority for organizations attempting to drive their digital transformation initiatives.
While it’s clear that data integration is critical for digital transformation, businesses need to employ the right solution. That is to say, companies must rely on modern data integration solutions to transform their way of doing business and deliver value.
Modern data integration solutions enable non-technical business users to consolidate complex, bi-directional data streams in minutes. With features like pre-built application connectors, shared templates, dashboards & intuitive screens, and AI-data mapping, these solutions enable non-technical business users to create data connections and facilitate the improved exchange of information across partner ecosystems. That almost eliminates the problem of data silos. Further, business users can create onboarding connections by pointing and clicking through easy screens. By onboarding customer data faster, organizations can comprehend the emerging needs of customers and deliver on them quickly.
So, with modern solutions in place, organizations can integrate data faster and drive seamless data exchange across multiple business ecosystems, thus riding the digital transformation wave with ease.