There’s a common thread in business today: that every decision is data-driven or is at the least influenced by relevant, real-time data from across the organisation, writes Andrew Winlaw, General Manager – Integration, Atturra
Business leaders have always understood there is power and value in data. They’re active and prominent internal consumers of data insights and intelligence already, and increasingly interested in the mechanics of how data rolls up to them from various parts of the organisation and is coalesced into the dashboards and reports they see.
That coalescence is integration of data from key processes and systems from across the organisation.
This perspective has pushed the enterprise integration conversation from a fragmented departmental chat to one the executives and boards now understand and relate with quantifiable business outcomes.
Australian beverage maker Lion, for example, improved its ability to make just-in-time deliveries to pubs and supermarkets by modernising business-to-business data exchange between its own systems and those of its customers.
Similarly, Catholic Development Fund Melbourne automated financial reconciliation of over 293 schools, bringing down the time from up to 90 days to under a week, freeing up hundreds of hours of their team for better tasks.
What’s common in these and many other success stories is the demonstrable value from automation that the leadership saw before, during, and after a fit-for-purpose integration solution was deployed.
Why business leaders and boards care
In specifying and delivering business-driven data integration programs for clients, I’ve observed four common reasons that business leaders and boards care about data integration, amongst other competing priorities.
The first reason is that real-time access to consolidated data can support faster decision making and dynamic planning. Much of the business world is moving from batch to real-time transaction processing in response to changing customer expectations and market conditions. Businesses need to be agile to adjust to change, and that means equipping leaders and boards with insights that provide certainty that going in a different direction is warranted and supported by observed patterns of customer behaviour.
The second reason leaders care about data integration is that it is an enabler of customer-centric service delivery. Today, there is a requirement to have a 360-degree view of a customer to understand and service them consistently across all touchpoints. Leaders understand the power of customer-centricity, and its ability to contribute to the business bottom line through, for instance, higher spend per shop or increased customer lifetime value. This requires seamless integration and process automation between marketing, service and fulfilment channels at a minimum.
A desire to reduce cost-to-serve is the third reason. Streamlined systems and automated processes bring down the operating costs. By integrating and analysing datasets, organisations can identify inefficiencies in their current processes and automate manual or effort-intensive aspects to take cost out while improving service outcomes.
Finally, leaders and boards see potential benefits around enhancing regulatory confidence. When organisations are at the point of being able to integrate their systems, process and data, they have likely already undergone important preparatory work around data lineage and governance. The same preparatory data work is also required before data can be used in AI applications. Importantly, data preparation is a recognised priority of audit committees and regulators. As a result, performing this work – ahead of data integration, AI projects, or both – positions leaders and directors to effectively meet their duties and instil confidence that data-driven decisions and outcomes are rooted in good data.
A phased approach to realise value
In order to increase adoption and return on investment organisations should align data integration projects to targeted business outcomes and board-level objectives such as growth, risk mitigation and efficiency. A good approach to achieve success in this area is to start with a discovery workshop led by industry consultants, not just technologists, to identify and document the revenue drivers, cost impacts and operational blockers being observed or experienced by the business that data integration could help to address.
The next step is to define some success metrics. As the goal is to use data integration to achieve business objectives, metrics should be similarly aligned. For example, faster client onboarding or time reduction in claims processing time and effort, or a timely launch of new features. What’s important is that the efforts are not measured using only IT metrics.
The availability of common, proven integration-led business solutions designed for specific use cases, such as those made by Atturra, are an ideal way to approach the implementation phase.
Solutions for Customer 360 enablement that integrate customer data across sales, services and marketing touchpoints; or for finance automation to streamline invoices, payments and reconciliations between systems; or that enable the faster launch of new digital products and services; all exist today and can be immediately introduced to realise business benefits from data integration sooner.
These can also prepare organisations for the future with AI-ready data integration foundations to unlock additional actionable insights; and by improving connectivity between enterprise systems.
By taking a deliberate approach – linking data integration to strategic business goals, using ready-made integration-led business solutions, and measuring outcomes against business KPIs – organisations can convert current executive interest in data into real and lasting business value.
