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Perspectives

Integrations: How Your Tech Stack is Finally Working for You

Written By: Jay Jamison
February 25, 2020
4 min read

The history of enterprise software has been plagued by a wag the dog problem. Massively powerful and critical systems were so difficult to connect without powerful integrations that the business was subject to the constraints of the software and the people that manage it. The result? If you want to digitize your enterprise, you are now limited to innovation within the box of these systems—which seems contradictory.

What if I could tell you there is a sanctioned way IT can maintain control over a system like SAP, can still govern the system and the data, but you can now connect that data and orchestrate all of your workflows from SAP to all of the other systems in your business? This alleviates all the system–related constraints on your business and unleashes the data in those systems to gain insights across your business. This sounds like a dream right?

This isn’t a dream—it is reality.

The Power of Integrations

Integrations in partnership with workflow orchestration and low-code capabilities allow you to finally gain access and insights across all the data running through your critical systems in your business—creating an ecosystem instead of a series of islands.

Most businesses—doesn’t matter how big or small—are going to have a couple of systems, whether it is email, ecommerce, marketing, payroll for small and medium size businesses, to an enterprise where you have all kinds of things Salesforce, Service Now, SAP and then typically up to three of everything else. Some businesses have three ways simply to collaborate with Slack, Zoom, Skype, and other project management tools. This creates a myriad of issues when it comes to gaining insights from the data dormant in those systems. Integrations is the key to the business utilizing that data as knowledge to make key decisions and gain insights.

It is no surprise to me that the technologies that have come out on top—take Slack for example—have been the ones that have integrations built in. Automatically connecting systems, like Jira, into the workflows for every employee that needs it creates immense value for the business.

The Low-Code Connection

Companies have tons of different systems: CRM, marketing automation, quote to cash system/finance to track efficiency of your investments, etc. and the challenge is weaving those systems together and extending them to do what you want is really hard. Low-code platforms are a great way to extend those systems and create the exact solution you want, but the challenge has been it is too hard to connect to these third–party systems. With integration and workflow automation capabilities there is a sanctioned, robust and powerful way to connect everything creating a fully digitized and interconnected solution.

Picture this: You have Salesforce, Marketo and Outreach, and now you can have a low-code + integrations and workflow automations platform sitting in the middle. So when marketing sends a series of emails, they can be added to the record in Salesforce and drive the right behavior in Outreach. You can continually innovate within your systems and your technology will no longer hold you back.

Freed from Systems Prison

The world’s greatest companies can no longer be held prisoner by their systems, only innovating as quickly as their systems and technology can allow. They need connectivity within a collaboration environment to optimize those systems and free the data to actually work for them.

Getting data down to the teams and the people that need it, and creating the capability for a broad array of people to solve the problems in front of them, not held hostage to their systems is the way to unleash a culture of continuous innovation.

You can’t exist on an island and be a leader. We know that any company, no matter how big, won’t have one single platform or vendor that a company can run on completely. You have your specific set of systems and for you to be a leader within a company you have to be able to connect and coexist and extend those systems to drive innovation in your organization.

We need every business to know that this is now possible, because there is no ceiling to what businesses can do with this technology.

Written By: Jay Jamison

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