Almost every business faces the same issues around data – they want complete end-to-end data continuity. But in reality, they continue to experience the pain that comes with data fragmentation. It is easy to see why—operations typically rely on using multiple people across multiple systems. The people could be in-house employees, local/offshore contractors, or various third-party vendors, and the systems they rely on are typically a mixed bag of in-house systems or various licensed apps. Data fragmentation is almost inevitable when you factor in all these variables. This is where integrations come into play. When looking at integrations, it is good to think of them macroscopically—is there one solution that can bring everything together? If not, integrations are great, but if you have multiple siloed integrations, you will likely still experience fragmentation.
This blog post will explore the tangible and intangible benefits of system integrations. By having the right integrations in place, your business operations can achieve greater data continuity and finally have a single source of truth, leading to many benefits such as reporting consistency, FTE efficiency, better exception management processes, operating cost reductions, and less risk. All good things!
Nearly 90% of companies believe data is fragmented across silos and is, or will become, nearly impossible to manage long term.
As the demand for productivity increases, exploring ways to optimize time spent on tasks is essential. That’s where system integrations come in. By combining multiple processes and applications into one streamlined source of truth, system integrations significantly reduce the time spent on tasks. What does this mean for you? Faster completion and improved productivity. With integrated systems, you have everything you need in one place, allowing you to work efficiently and achieve your goals quicker than ever.
More than a third (35%) of orgs use 6 or more solutions for all of their secondary data operations and of that, 10% use between 11 to 15 or more solutions. Additionally, 63% of organizations have between 4-15 copies of the same data.
As the demand for data continuity continues to rise (or as the problems associated with data fragmentation continue to hamper your business ), the need for seamless systems increases. Organizations can save substantial money over time by integrating multiple systems into one. This eliminates the need for additional purchases and streamlines processes by making all necessary data and applications readily available in one place. Not to mention being able to save costs around FTEs doing duplicate data entry and reducing the amount of BPM reporting tools.
According to Gartner’s latest press release, data integration tools can save companies more than $500,000 annually.
As the old saying goes, you can’t make good decisions off of bad information. Imagine how often you accessed something already a few days old but already updated elsewhere. Integrating systems significantly enhances data reliability by centralizing data and providing protection from individual component failures, human error, or stale data. By combining highly powerful components into one integrated system, companies are finding that they achieve faster processing speeds, have access to more reliable data, and achieve greater control than functioning off of separate software applications could ever offer.
With reliable data, business leaders can eliminate the guesswork when it comes to making informed decisions. It is fuel that delivers trusted analytics and insights.
The ability to scale up as operational demand or client acquisition rates increase is crucial. By integrating your various systems, adding new features or components becomes a much smoother process. Your solution provider implements new processes and integrations while your internal IT department focuses on more critical business goals. You save time and resources. Scalability becomes achievable, positioning your business to handle the increased volume without being held back or spinning in circles.
Developing native integrations is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. This means there is a caveat to developing your own in-house integrations, as they can derail core product development.
Efficiently tracking progress and performance can be daunting when dealing with many systems, and exception management is nearly impossible. That’s where a unified dashboard comes in, providing a single comprehensive reporting and analysis center—no more sifting through endless spreadsheets or toggling between multiple interfaces. This unified dashboard is only possible if all systems are funneling into one fully integrated application. By consolidating essential data, you can quickly pinpoint areas that need attention and make informed decisions to drive progress.
The leading data integration use case in enterprises is enabling more effective data cleansing and transformation workflows to improve data warehouse reporting and dashboards.
Integrated systems can provide increased efficiency through automation, cost savings with automated maintenance and monitoring, enhanced reliability from redundancy and backup systems, scalability for growing businesses, and comprehensive reporting for performance evaluation. You are likely aware of data fragmentation issues in your business at this stage. You want to resolve them but haven’t made the time yet. We get it. This sounds like a big undertaking, but remember, most people even clean their garage once a year. This should be looked at the same way! There are solutions out there that specialize in integrations and have helped multiple businesses achieve their goals. So what sounds like a big undertaking to you may not to a seasoned specialist in this field. One thing is sure, the longer you wait to get started, the more fragmentation your business will experience, so start now.
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