Leaders of companies are planning for the year ahead, assessing how their investment in innovation and digital transformation can best align with their corporate vision and business strategy.
Committing to innovation goals like accelerating digital transformation or achieving hyper-automation should be lauded. But stating a commercial goal and simply investing in associated technology isn’t the full picture. In many boardroom discussions, there’s an important part of the jigsaw missing and that is integration.
Integration is the glue between your transformation strategy and your investment technology. Many such innovation initiatives fail, not because the strategy is wrong or the technology fails, but because the integration component has not been fully considered.
Planning for, investing in, and executing a solid integration strategy ensures the enterprise operates as a productive, agile, and efficient whole. Companies rely on tens, sometimes hundreds of different technologies, platforms, apps, and software in order to deliver their services and products. Given that, business leaders are realising that without integration, there can be no transformation, let alone hyper-automation – a key Gartner trend for the last two years.
So where should businesses invest, and what trends should they be aware of?
1. Unlocking AI efficiencies
One challenge for businesses in 2023 is capturing the context and essence of hybrid or fully remote meetings in conjunction with the meeting content. And then processing that captured data in core business processes and systems. This requires social and collaborative platforms that interact intelligently with other core business systems and processes—which again underlines the need for API integration and hyper-automation.
Let’s look at a common scenario in business; the challenge of conversing with colleagues across borders, who don’t share a common language. Despite all the ingredient technologies being onstream for several years, real-time translation in work applications still isn’t commonplace within the enterprise. I’d argue that this is not therefore a technology problem but rather, it is an integration problem.
That’s why we’ve recently introduced to our Harmony integration platform technology that translates in real-time what’s being said across a communication platform, such as Zoom or Teams. The benefits of real-time speech translation using AI are obvious. It makes a huge difference to efficiency, productivity, and customer opportunities. But the true value of this technology can only be unlocked when it’s integrated beyond a single Zoom call and into the wider business. For example, when AI automated transcripts of the call in selected languages are automatically imported into the company CRM or customer service platform.
That’s why choosing an integration platform with features such as real-time language translation embedded is infinitely preferable to deploying individual point solutions. Using an integration platform means integrating AI efficiency tools such as real-time speech translation with your other business tools, technologies and apps. Doing so enables the easy automation of the complete business platform to maximise value across the organisation.
2. Multiplying marketplaces
According to research from the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr), UK retailers are turning over an estimated £282bn a year on online marketplaces. Moreover, retailers who sell on marketplaces saw a 9.2% increase in revenue last year – that’s 2% more than retailers without a marketplace position.
In 2023, I expect retailers who don’t yet have a marketplace presence to try and find their position as swiftly as possible. To do that, they’ll have to invest in integration and automation to connect and efficiently leverage multiple marketplaces. Additionally, I expect to see more brands and retailers launch their own marketplaces to retain and attract customers. It’s clear now that marketplace experiences gives customers what they want, namely convenience, choice and competitive pricing.
And marketplaces aren’t going to be limited to retail. I anticipate marketplaces for software solutions to increase as leading SaaS brands seek to integrate other vendors’ solutions into their own platforms.
3. The arrival of integrated low-code applications
While the benefits of low-code applications are now well established, the hidden pain points of low-code are increasingly becoming apparent. Thanks to the rise of low-code solutions, building apps is now possible for non-coders outside the IT function of any business. This creates a huge opportunity. However, many businesses are finding that, once the application has been created, the challenge of integrating it into the wider business remains.
This hidden integration cost mitigates—sometimes even dwarfs—the benefits of choosing low-code development in the first place. A lack of integration inevitably means many low-code apps become “‘zombies”. Their data is siloed, delivering little value across the business and in many cases, no longer maintained or used.
On the path to hyper-automation, businesses need the increasing numbers of low-code apps created by so-called “business technologists” to be fully integrated and connected. For this reason, I expect 2023 to be the tipping point for the emergence of a new generation of low-code solutions – integrated low-code application platforms (iLCAP). iLCAP is low-code 2.0. It removes the pain of integrating low-code applications because these apps are built and connected within the company’s existing integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) solution.
The Future is Integrated
As capital markets shift, and investors and shareholders place increasing emphasis on efficiency and profit, enterprise companies are increasingly turning to automation in order to remain competitive. The strategic goal for many is hyper-automation – where every repetitive manual data process is removed. However, the reality is that there can be no automation, let alone hyper-automation, without integration. Investments in AI, low-code platforms, or even channels such as marketplaces deliver poor returns when not fully integrated into the wider business. 2023, with all its challenges, is a year for enterprise leaders to focus on the detail behind their strategic goals and invest in the glue that holds everything together – integration.
Jitterbit empowers business transformation by automating critical business processes for faster, more informed decision-making. Harmony is the only platform to seamlessly combine and simplify the power of integration, APIM, and no-code app creation to amplify the value of your tech stack and speed up your digital journey. Organizations worldwide rely on Jitterbit’s experience and expertise to help them save time and money, while creating exceptional human experiences, now and into the future. Learn how Jitterbit helps people work happier at www.jitterbit.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
