Integrated solutions for current workflows
What you need to know for successful workflow integration implementation in your digital transformation strategy. There’re many reasons to implement automation technology. Whether it’s to automate repetitive work, collect and analyze large amounts of data, or run reports more quickly and accurately, automation technology can transform business processes enterprise wide.
Process automation helps by removing the human component from repetitive, essential tasks, giving you transparency while increasing organizational efficiency. But automation isn’t enough. Without connected systems, your business can only go so far. To fully digitize your enterprise and deliver on customer demands, you need to consider workflow integration.
What Is Workflow Integration?
Workflows are the daily tasks and steps that your employees take to carry out their roles in your company. Simply put, workflow integration connects various processes together using content and technology to streamline the workflow. With integrations, you connect your business processes, allowing for information to freely move between various platforms.
The Problem of stacking apps
Increasing customer demands drive organizations to add more and more features and services to their business model. This means that most companies have huge application stacks. The average enterprise uses 464 custom applications with another 37 set to deploy.
Whether customer-facing or back-office, these programs handle huge amounts of data native to the individual platform. For your organization to be efficient, these applications need to communicate that data seamlessly across various platforms. But not all platforms are designed to communicate with each other. To make that happen, you need integration software.
Choosing an all-in-one solution
Many companies take a "best-of-breed" approach when it comes to choosing technology. Across the business, the heads of departments look to implement high numbers of highly specialized technologies to help them reach their specific goals. With integration capabilities as a consideration, the priority is on how well a solution’s core functionality solves that particular department’s challenges.
But over time these products evolve in different ways, with varying levels of continued innovation. The result is a mix of large, legacy software and newer SaaS applications, some with custom integrations and others with open APIs but requiring heavy development involvement.
Why should this matter to your company? No single department or division operates in a silo. At the highest level, integrations allow transparency and visibility necessary for reporting. But on a daily basis, all of these technologies need to connect seamlessly in order for data to flow back and forth and to trigger an action from one platform to another.
An automation solution solves this problem by filling in the functionality gaps. Your departments can continue using the tools best suited for their needs, even those with limited workflow functionality, without sacrificing process efficiency across your business.
With cross-platform connectivity, an all-in-one automation tool with workflow integration capabilities can connect all your various systems enterprise-wide (ERP, CRM, HRIS, etc.) to ensure uninterrupted workflows. It can initiate processes based on system events and minimize the need for manual data entry, without burdening your IT team with custom integrations.
Coordinating Workflow Automation Software
Workflow integration software functions like a foreign language translator. Each application in your organization speaks a different language. Integration software translates that language effortlessly. With an endlessly growing list of applications on the market, workflow integration is essential if you want data harmony in your company.
Unfortunately, not all software connects seamlessly. While major Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms, such as G-Suite or Office 365 can connect to other mainstream applications without many issues, custom-built and older applications aren’t so lucky. This leaves organizations with many disconnected mission-critical applications.
With workflow integration, businesses can sync that software, creating bridges link applications and workflows, giving them the most out of their process automation.
Workflow Integration Return
There’re many benefits gained through workflow integration, and they fall into three main areas:
Improve operational efficiency.
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of workflow integration technology is improved operational efficiency. By streamlining workflows, you can eliminate redundancies such as double entry of data, reducing the chance of errors. Systems work smarter, not harder.
The increased process transparency also allows you to reach higher levels of accountability. By moving workflows out of individual systems and into a workflow integration solution, it’s easier to pinpoint where your bottlenecks are in any process, and whether they’re related to a system or an employee. Being able to diagnose your process challenges with this type of precision means better, faster problem-solving.
2. Optimize the employee experience.
With a workflow integration solution, you can create a better day-to-day experience for your employees. First, it lifts much of the burden off members of your IT team, who are responsible for maintaining your system integrations and monitoring all systems and apps for issues. For the rest of your employees directly involved in the processes that run through your workflow integration solution, the technology allows for improved communication and collaboration. Employees can receive real-time notifications when needed to take action at various parts of the process and stay informed of the status of different projects.
Then, employees company-wide become more productive. Your IT team can focus on other priorities and your employees can spend less time on manual work and more time on value-added activities. This keeps employees engaged and focused on developing the skills that will help them grow their careers, rather than non-transferrable, company-specific operational knowledge.
3. Accelerate financial success.
Better processes matter to your company’s bottom line. Over the last two years, automation and other digital technologies have emerged as the most common digital capabilities developed to help companies reduce costs.
Just how does the adoption of automation solutions help you create financial opportunity? With better workflow integration, your systems can work together to add more value to your processes. For example, information from your CRM can feed right into your marketing automation tool to create more personalized prospect and customer communications. Or, streamlined procurement and accounting processes mean faster client billing, with more visibility into invoice and payment status.
Reaching your business goals with workflow integration technology
Now consider your company’s most urgent challenges. Is it employee retention in the wake of today’s talent shortage? Certainly, one of the biggest CEO concerns for 2020. Because of its impact on the employee experience, a workflow integration solution can help. Not only does it create more meaningful experiences for employees, but it also demonstrates your company’s commitment to technology and positions you as an employer of choice.
Are you looking to better position yourself financially to be more attractive to potential buyers? Companies in this stage can benefit from lowering operating costs to show healthy profitability. Streamlining processes with automation technology can reduce costs almost immediately.
The Problem of Technical Debt
Modernizing legacy systems comes with its fair share of expenses. Removing technical debt with lines of code created from scratch requires skill, time, and money. It also diverts your IT departments from focusing on innovation and efficiency (not to mention the cost of maintenance from middleware software). If your company wants to embrace digital transformation, you will need to move away from your old systems and adopt modern, flexible technology for integration.
Is digital transformation on your radar?
Your company’s operations represent a great place to start your journey. Connecting your systems via a workflow integration solution can help create the visibility you need to develop a strategy plan for transforming your business with automation technology.
We can help you to create your digital transformation plan and achieve long-term success. Let’s talk! (305) 400-0992.