Digital Integration Is the Future of Your Business, Starting in 2022

Is your business investing time and resources into making your hardware and software systems, as well as connected devices, work for you? If you aren't, you may already be at a deficit compared to your industry peers, and the business costs of that disadvantage are likely to accelerate in 2022 and beyond.

Digital integration consolidates all of your company’s digital technologies, enabling each to communicate and be understood using a standard format. Integration is about fundamentally transforming your operational efficiency so that each of your employees functions optimally and cohesively in a connected ecosystem. Manual workflows become automated and data from disparate systems are joined into one reliable, single source.

With digital integration, sometimes referred to as “digital transformation,” your business relies on state-of-the-art technology infrastructure to help solve your most complex business challenges and focus on delivering greater value to your customers. Digitally integrated businesses are poised to benefit from all transformational digital innovations including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), automation, cloud computing, powerful data analytics, and more.

Most businesses have recognized the need to become digitally integrated and are somewhere along their journey. According to the recently released Digibee 2022 State of the Enterprise Integration report, while the majority of IT professionals say integration plays a vital role in their digital strategy, many are still struggling with implementation. Though 93% of surveyed IT leaders in the finance, manufacturing, and retail industries claim digital enterprise integration is a business imperative, only 7% have succeeded in establishing a strategy.

Many business leaders today are at a loss for how to get started modernizing their technology infrastructures. A common approach, and one that often leads to failure, is to piecemeal initiatives according to immediate needs and available budget. To succeed, digital integration must begin with a companywide initiative involving all decision-makers and accountants/finance personnel, as well as IT leaders, web developers, and system architects. Collectively, the team must first define the long-term initiatives and business goals that will comprise the strategy.

According to the business and IT leaders surveyed by Digibee, the key objectives for digital integration include:

• AI & automation enablement (31%)
• Improve data security (28%)
• Improve security, reliability, governance (28%)
• Reduce operational costs (28%)
• Faster time to market (27%)
• Better business analytics and decision making (24%)
• Cloud migration or upgrade, digital transformation (23%)
• Upgrade from legacy infrastructure (21%)

According to Digibee, poor attempts at integration result in wasted investments, delayed timelines, and negative business impacts on innovation, efficiency, agility, and productivity. An astounding 98% of respondents have already begun rebuilding integrations for key business applications since the original failed integration attempts.

Working with technology vendors who understand and support digital integration strategies is central to achieving these objectives and avoiding the pain points of failure. The right vendors will take the following steps:

1. Assess your company’s skill levels in implementing digital integration
2. Explain the complexity of the total project and timelines involved
3. Analyze complete system and data integrations
4. Review business operations and appropriate application programming interfaces (APIs)
5. Detail security considerations
6. Work with you on making the right updates from legacy systems

The right technology partner(s) will help your leaders undertake a process that will define your strategy and priorities, and lay out clear objectives and timelines. Before working with outside consultants and vendors, a good first step toward successful digital integration is to gain consensus on your business objectives, including reducing operational costs, increasing security, and gaining faster and more competitive times to market. Then you can begin to interview technology providers who can partner with your team to connect your systems, processes, and people for a successful digital integration initiative.