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How to Integrate–And Modernize–Your Enterprise

Posted on October 24, 2022 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions

Your organization likely uses multiple systems every day just to get business done. Your company and end-to-end supply chain may use different customer relationship management (CRM) systems and enterprise resource management (ERP) systems to manage day-to-day tasks.

Various departments might jump back and forth between project management software and production software, logistics systems and ecommerce platforms, and different software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems for various clients or vendors.

From sales and marketing to backend logistics and asset and product management, organizational silos lack visibility, making it impossible to make informed decisions for your business.

The complexity of gathering data and insights from multiple sources can be a challenge, especially when the acronyms alone are enough to make your head spin. As a CEO, you need clarity, insight and transparency throughout your organization to understand the state of your business at any given moment.

How much time would you save and how much easier would your job be if all of those systems were integrated? Then you could have all of your programs and associated data available to you instantly, without organizational silos or having to hop from one system to another. An enterprise integration platform as a service (iPaaS) can make that happen.

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

warehouse-workers-checking-inventory-on-a-computer

What is an iPaaS?

An iPaaS solution is a scalable subscription-based service that bridges the gap between your current systems and new technologies, by connecting data and platforms that have never been connected before, regardless of underlying silos or legacy infrastructure.

Recent Gartner Research shows that enterprise iPaaS solutions had 38% growth in 2020, reaching $3.5 billion, becoming the largest stand-alone integration market. 

What This Means for Business Leaders

For CEOs and other business leaders, moving toward an iPaaS solution means no more logging into different platforms to gather data and insights from across your organization. It means no longer accessing ecommerce platforms and CRM systems separately, or trying to decipher analytics and gain insights from disparate data. 

It means having the ability to connect all of your end-to-end ERP and CRM systems and software into one platform to eliminate silos and integrate programs and data across the enterprise. Just imagine being able to access all of the information you need to gain overall insight into the organization in real time – all in one place. It’s possible, and it can happen in just a few short weeks. Seriously.

How does integration impact business functions?

An iPaaS solution integrates data from multiple sources, including CRM, ERP, ecommerce, and automation integration.

Let’s drill down into how each of these systems serve the business and why it’s important to integrate them.

CRM integration

  • Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are critical to store important customer and prospect data and to track customer interactions. Whether your integrated CRM is operational, analytical, or collaborative, CRM integrations can provide a complete picture of your customers in real time and indicate how they relate to and interact with your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts.

ERP integration

  • Enterprise resource management (ERP) is software that is used to manage day-to-day activities including product, asset, and project management. ERP system integration is vital to keep everything on track, especially when multiple clients or vendors are involved.

Ecommerce integration

  • It’s critical for organizations to have ecommerce integration for real time, accurate, seamless data transfer between your ecommerce platforms and key areas of your business including marketing, sales, inventory, accounting, and your CRM systems.

Automation integration

  • Intelligent automation integration can help with artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, and can help alleviate tedious tasks such as gathering insights and analytics from multiple sources. In a recent Deloitte survey of executives, 73% of respondents say their organization has embarked on a path to intelligent automation. (Which interestingly, jumped 58% from Deloitte’s survey done prior to the pandemic.)

Enterprise Integration is Important, So Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?

Most business leaders understand the importance of enterprise integration. The recent Digibee State of Enterprise Integration Report 2022 shows that the majority of respondents believe it is a top priority, but few have taken action to make it happen.

93%
say enterprise integration is vital to their business or nice to have

7%
have successfully implemented an enterprise integration strategy

94%
of those who haven’t implemented don’t even have a solution in mind

Enterprise integration is critical, yet it’s clear most companies don’t have a strategy. Why? It may be because decision makers are not aware of the components of an effective integration strategy.

These include:

  • Defining the goals of your project
  • Securing alignment with your team
  • Choosing the right technology

Collaboration is key to successful business integration

C-level executives must work together, along with their respective extended teams and other stakeholders across the organization, to ensure the development of an effective integration strategy. Businesses can only select the right integration solution through collaboration and understanding of cross-functional needs throughout the enterprise.

It’s time to stop using so many different systems and modernize your organization with enterprise integration. Don’t procrastinate. Integrate, automate, and innovate your business with an effective iPaaS strategy.

The State of Enterprise Integration Report by Digibee offers unique, data-based insights into the latest trends in enterprise integration as well as a look at current best practices and changes to expect in the future.

Learn more about Digibee’s innovative approach to integration. Download your free copy of the report today. Or, if you prefer, contact our experts directly for more information.

Your data, fully integrated, in less than three weeks. Let Digibee show you how

3 Pillars of an Effective Integration Strategy

Posted on October 19, 2022 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Enterprises are adopting digital-first strategies to help increase operational efficiency and meet changing customer expectations. But companies reliant on legacy systems and siloed data are at a disadvantage compared to their digital native competitors and must integrate existing systems and data with modern tools.

Many business leaders recognize the urgency to modernize their infrastructure, but most face significant challenges when it comes to developing an effective enterprise integration strategy.

The State of Integration

Almost all – 93% – of enterprise IT professionals acknowledge the value of integration, with 57% saying integration strategy is vital to the success of their business. And yet implementation remains low. Worse still, organizations that integrate without an effective strategy in place report a range of negative impacts:

  • Inability to adopt new technologies
  • Ineffective processes that hamper growth and success
  • Limited ability to respond to market changes
  • IT specialists forced to focus on low-value work

So what’s going wrong? Why is progress on integration roadmaps so slow?

One problem is that many organizations are focusing on integration technology first and failing to consider the other components of an effective integration strategy. While choosing the right solution to support your enterprise integration framework is important, there are other considerations that must come first.

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

The Three Pillars

1. Define the Goals of Your Project

Before you choose which integration solution is right for your organization, you have to define what you hope to achieve and identify any gaps in your integration capabilities. 

The majority of enterprise IT experts agree that integration is important, but their reasons vary considerably:

  • Enable the use of artificial intelligence and/or automation
  • Improve security or governance
  • Reduce operational costs
  • Decrease time to market
  • Improve analytics and decision-making capabilities
  • Upgrade from legacy infrastructure or migrate to the cloud

Once you’ve identified the reasons driving your enterprise integration project, make a list of any factors that could delay or derail implementation. Is the cost of integration a major concern? Are you worried about disruptions to daily operations during the transition? Do you have compliance standards that need to be maintained during your integration journey? Is the potential complexity of the project holding you back?

2. Secure Alignment Among Your Team

As we collected data on the state of enterprise integration in 2022, we uncovered a distinct disparity between different stakeholders when we asked who the key players in integration strategy were:

  • 65% of CIOs said members of the C-suite were the major stakeholders
  • 72% of developers and architects said that IT was running the show

That gap in perspective is a problem. If two groups with competing priorities and goals each think they’re the principal player in developing an integration strategy, the odds of alignment between objectives and challenges are pretty low. 

Forming an enterprise integration strategy team can help ensure that all perspectives are heard and considered as you build an integration roadmap. Make sure you include input from:

  • Enterprise architects
  • Integration specialists
  • Development teams
  • Executive leaders
  • Anyone who will use your integration solution

Involving players at all organizational levels can help you develop a strategy that achieves everyone’s goals – and avoid dealing with a patchwork of shadow IT solutions.

3. Choose the Right Technology

After you’ve completed these two steps, you’re ready for the final component of your enterprise integration strategy – choosing the right solution. Where other companies have skipped straight to this step, the time and effort you’ve invested in getting to this point will reduce your risk of experiencing common integration pitfalls. 

Selecting the right solution will be much easier now that your collaborative team has already defined what you’re trying to achieve and what’s standing in your way. You should have alignment on factors like:

  • Short- and long-term goals
  • Cost
  • Timeline
  • Specific concerns or priorities

Build Your Integration Strategy with Digibee

At Digibee, we understand that business doesn’t stop while you make changes to your systems and processes. Our innovative iPaaS ensures your organization has the flexibility and agility you need to compete in a digital-first world without compromising the high level of service your customers have come to expect.

Digibee’s unique business model means you can try our solution without a lengthy commitment or hefty upfront investment. And even better – we can shorten the time it takes to implement your integration strategy from months to weeks.

Don’t miss out! You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Request a demo now.

Maximize Integration Efforts with the Gartner Integration Maturity Model

Posted on October 14, 2022 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions

According to us, the Gartner Integration Maturity Model quantifies the progression of enterprises in their digital transformation journey, providing a framework by which organizations can determine where they are across the five stages of maturity.

Stages of Enterprise Integration

Understanding your current state of integration–whether it’s average or amazing–helps to inform your overall strategy, providing tangible markers you must achieve in the advancement of this business-critical initiative. 

In the report, Gartner identifies five different stages of enterprise integration:

Stage 1: Ad Hoc – No formal (or informal) integration strategy is in place. Work is tackled on a project-by-project basis. No dedicated resources.
Stage 2: Enlightened – A formal policy is in place, but at a macro level. Dedicated human and financial resources are in place to support the work.
Stage 3: Centralized – An established team delivers integration services, with a formal, centrally managed sourcing strategy.
Stage 4: Collaborative – An Integration Strategy Empowerment Team (ISET) is created to govern and support distributed teams focused on integration. Education and engagement programs support expansion of the approach.
Stage 5: Self-Service Integration – IT and non-IT personas are empowered to self-serve, with the ISET managing the continuous alignment of self-service integration with the overall business strategy.

Progression of Enterprises Within the Maturity Model

7% have successfully implemented an enterprise integration strategy

While some organizations transcend quickly through the different maturity models, most make slow progress, hampered by budgetary concerns, existing legacy infrastructure, and resourcing issues. As a result, Gartner estimates that less than 5% of their client base has achieved the highest maturity level, Stage 5: Self-Service.

These findings align with the 2022 Digibee State of Enterprise Integration Report, where only 7% of 1,000+ business and technology leaders reported that they’ve successfully implemented an enterprise integration strategy. So what’s taking so long? 

Take the Lead with iPaaS

Rapid acceleration of your enterprise integration strategy isn’t always easy–and sometimes it’s not even possible, especially in the early stages (1 and 2). But as the business becomes more organized, even in Stage 3 with a centralized model, we see greater adoption of technology to help, in particular enterprise integration platform as a service. 

The implementation of iPaaS streamlines the work required to connect systems, data, and other infrastructure, quickly advancing integration initiatives, including cloud migration, modernization of legacy architecture, and collaborative integrations across customers and partners.

Once supported with an iPaaS system, your enterprise will really start to evolve with the advantages of system integration, enabling activation of projects that drive meaningful value to the organization. Here are the top initiatives leaders prioritized in the 2022 Digibee State of Enterprise Integration report:

  • 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, upgrade, or digital transformation (23%)
  • Upgrade from legacy infrastructure (21%)

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

3 Steps to Achieve the Highest Maturity Levels

Progressive organizations lead the way at Stages 4 and 5 with an established ISET to manage and support integration initiatives across the enterprise. If your organization sits at a lower stage, don’t despair. Here are three key recommendations to help you quickly evolve to the highest maturity levels:

1. Define Your Current Maturity Stage

Take a cold hard look at your current integration capabilities. Are you investing too much time and money rebuilding what you’ve already built? The 2022 Digibee Enterprise Integration Report reveals that 98% of organizations repeatedly rebuild integrations for key business applications every year. With multiple applications running, the investment quickly becomes chronic and ongoing. Explore all of these inefficiencies and use them to support an iPaaS business case.

2. Build a Business Case for iPaaS

Digibee customers always have a clear-cut objective in mind prior to implementing the Digibee iPaaS. What’s yours? Revisit the list in the previous segment and select an initiative that is meaningful to your organization to help measure the ROI of enterprise integration. Research the best enterprise tool for your business, then build your iPaaS business case. This exercise will provide you with quantifiable efficiencies you can use to easily offset the budget and resources the project will require.

3. Create an Ad Hoc ISET to Lead the Charge

You don’t have to wait until you hit Stage 4 or 5 in the maturity model to build an ISET. Use existing in-house resources, the business and technology leaders who recognize that digital transformation is a business imperative. Harness the passion of curious developers, system architects, and citizen integrators who want to participate hands-on with the project. This is the team that will help guide you through all of the stages of integration maturity.

“By 2023 at least 50% of organizations will have an ISET to support self-service and other integration approaches.”

Integration Maturity Model, February 2022

With Digibee’s low code integration model, you can implement integrations 40% faster, decreasing operating costs with fewer incidents, faster recovery times, and zero downtime. These efficiencies help free up resources to focus on the highest value work for your enterprise. 

Read the entire Gartner Integration Maturity Model report to determine where your organization stands, including delivery, strategy, platform, and engagement models across all stages.

To learn more about Digibee, request a demo now.

Gartner, Gartner’s Integration Maturity Model, Abhishek Singh, Massimo Pezzini, and 2 more, 7 August 2020

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Death by Downtime: Enterprise Integration Strategies

Posted on October 12, 2022 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

As a business leader, you’re responsible for the health and success of the company. Accountable to the board, investors, customers, and employees, you must ensure the organization responds with agility to changes in the market.

In the recent Digibee Enterprise Integration Report, one of the data points we uncovered was particularly surprising. 

When asked about downtime encountered during their integration project, 79% reported system downtime that was significant, impactful, and more than expected. This is a 27% increase over 2022.

Based on the survey results and interactions with our customers, it’s clear the majority of enterprises embarking on an integration project simply presume downtime will occur (and likely a lot of it). Rather than the exception, downtime has become the rule with many technology leaders factoring it into their integration strategies. 

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

Downtime: Costs to the Business

We all pay a price for downtime and it’s only going up. In 2014, Gartner research indicated that the average cost of downtime was $5,600 per minute, for an hourly average of over $300K.

In 2022, ITIC research shows the cost has increased significantly for 90% of SME and large enterprises, with 44% reporting that a single hour of downtime could potentially cost over $1M. A staggering hit to the bottom line.

While security is at the top of the ITIC research list in terms of issues impacting downtime, integration/interoperability ranks in the top ten, along with human error, software bugs/flaws, complexity in configuring new apps, and understaffed/overworked IT departments. All of these are likely enterprise integration challenges you may encounter during your project.

The Big Bang Strategy

Typically, the blame for downtime is attributed to the integration technology. However, based on our experience, this outcome is more often due to poor planning or a lack of planning overall. While the integration strategy you create is critical to the strength of your plan and its execution, the wrong strategy will only compound the downtime your business encounters.

We see this a lot with big bang enterprise integration strategies. This model requires that you integrate all business modules at once. On paper this seems like an efficient and faster method to achieve enterprise integration, but in real-life it is extremely time-consuming and inefficient.

With a big bang strategy, critical failures increase since testing occurs at the end of the project once all integrations are complete—versus incrementally throughout the project. Tracing individual failures is also more complicated and time-consuming, forcing developers to go back and test each integration point.

Similar to a string of holiday lights, when one bulb fails, they all fail. The system can’t be restored until the fault is located.

security-system-engineer-identifying-problem-downtime-issues-SEI-report-blog

The Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service Strategy

Of course, a zero downtime deployment is rarely possible as we all encounter some integration problems during these projects. But with an effective integration strategy and the right technology, the risk of downtime and interruptions to the business are minimized.

Unlike big bang strategies that force us to rework the majority of existing integrations due to downstream dependencies, iPaaS technology enables a more deliberate, phased approach. Instead of investing significant manpower and resources out of the gate, iPaaS delivers a thoughtful and linear model that expedites outcomes while saving time and money.

Three Steps to Minimize Business Downtime

“Are you building around the tool or is the tool building around your business?”

Based on our work with enterprises across industries, here are three constructive steps that will help minimize business downtime during your integration project:

1. Select the right technology

Select a solution that allows you to build enterprise integrations the way you want them to be built. Ask yourself: are you building around the tool or is the tool building around your business? The technology you select must meet you where you’re at today, not the other way around. Adjusting your business model to accommodate your integration platform will almost always lead to unnecessary downtime.

2. Focus on the subset of connections

Abstract out the different connections across your entire integration strategy, then focus on the essential piece you want to migrate. Maintain all other systems, allowing them to coexist as usual by decoupling architecture from data flows. Contemporary iPaaS technology allows you to apply this metered approach for greater flexibility and uptime.

3. Minimize rework

Rework and downtime are inextricably linked. But while some rework is required for your integration project, it’s certainly not at the scale of a big bang strategy where all existing integrations must be touched. An iPaaS solution allows you to integrate in stages versus all at once. Smaller teams are able to perform the work at a faster cadence for an agile and cost-effective project.

The Digibee iPaaS provides additional measures to help our customers avoid downtime and other enterprise integration issues.

For example, the platform runs legacy and modern systems in tandem during implementation for always-on reliability. While your company carries on business as usual, system architects and developers are building, running, monitoring, and securing your new integration infrastructure.

The formal switch-over doesn’t occur until all connections are tested and validated. Best of all, this model is repeatable, carried out each time a new integration is enabled.

Your Enterprise Integration Business Case

You already face an uphill battle quantifying the value of an intangible such as enterprise integration to secure funding and support for the project. Diminishing promised value due to business downtime and other avoidable outcomes only weakens your position. 

If you are in the midst of planning an integration strategy for your organization, you’re not alone. Read the Digibee Enterprise Integration Report to learn how 1,000+ of your peers are preparing for their digital transformation. The report examines common pitfalls, best practices, and key takeaways to help inform your business case.

How to Align Your Stakeholders for S/4HANA Success

Posted on October 10, 2022 by - Cloud Migration, Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT, SAP

The success of any IT project that involves the migration from established, foundational technology to contemporary, cloud-based technology, is often determined by how well you integrate the old with the new.

Case in point is the impending SAP S/4HANA migration, which for many organizations will be the largest IT project they’ve undertaken in years (if not decades). This mammoth task requires enterprise integrations across multiple systems and data stores in support of a more agile, resilient, and competitive business.  

Along with a solid project integration strategy to support your SAP S/4HANA migration, success is also defined based on the time and resources consumed, as well as any downtime to the business. But even with the best project strategy, achieving your desired outcomes is difficult (if not impossible) if your internal stakeholders are not aligned on the objectives of the project. 

For example, your CIO may expect that your impending SAP S/4HANA migration will immediately improve data security, whereas your CFO may expect an overall reduction in operational costs. Perhaps your Sales leader expects a faster time to market for new offerings, while your IT team is aiming for business process optimization and improved system reliability. 

While each of these objectives is achievable, delivering all of them on day one is not. Aligning the priorities and expectations of internal teams is a critical factor in the success of your SAP S/4HANA migration strategy.

success-team-successful-group-at-work

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

A Meeting of the Minds

An international study about SAP S/4HANA transformation by LeanIX bears this out, with 66% of SAP users describing the alignment of teams (business, project, IT) as the biggest hurdle they face in migrating to SAP S/4HANA.

This lack of alignment impacts all aspects of your migration strategy, including enterprise integration and how internal teams prioritize these critical connections. 

The Digibee Enterprise Integration Report sums up an in-depth survey we conducted of business and technology leaders. For the report, we solicited input from respondents who had already implemented an enterprise-level integration initiative of a scale similar to the S/4HANA migration. We asked these leaders to identify three aspects of the project most likely to impact budget and spend. 

Everything is a priority

Top of the list was competing priorities, clearly reflecting a lack of alignment in how these important connections are ranked by internal teams:

SEI-2023-top-integration-objectives-for-transformation-graphic

*This blog post, originally published in October 2022, was updated above to reflect data from the 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report published in April, 2023.

While the variety of desired use cases reflects the broad scope of enterprise integration in supporting your S/4HANA migration, lack of clarity in prioritizing the work results in conflict amongst stakeholders, delaying implementation and increasing costs as everyone marches to the beat of their own drummer. 

System downtime and resourcing were the other aspects leadership called out as most impactful to project budget and spend. 

3 Steps to Plan (and Align) for Success

These steps will guide you in creating an effective integration strategy that will help drive alignment amongst your internal teams, while ensuring the success of your S/4HANA migration strategy.

  1. Organize your integration strategy in stages. Focus on a single objective as an initial stage, socializing the strategy with stakeholder groups before any work occurs. This serves as a dry run and an initial exercise in project prioritization for internal teams. Implement additional objectives in subsequent stages, increasing workloads as the IT and project teams gain momentum.
  2. Build a cost-effective integration strategy. While business and technology leaders have valid concerns around budget, time, and people, with enterprise iPaaS technology, you can easily leverage in-house resources and other efficiencies to ensure your integration strategy delivers results in record time and on budget.
  3. Include the medium- and longer-term benefits of enterprise integration in your migration business case. While a successful integration strategy is imperative to your SAP S/4HANA migration, eiPaaS technology delivers continuous, ongoing value and innovation to your business:

Digibee Supports Business Process Optimization

Digibee works with organizations globally, supporting SAP S/4HANA migrations with flexible and fast integration strategies. 

With our low code integration model, Digibee customers implement integrations 40% faster, decreasing operating costs with fewer incidents, faster recovery times, and zero downtime. These efficiencies help free up resources to focus on the higher priority S/4HANA migration work. 

Visit our SAP S/4HANA integration page to learn more or request a demo with our team to discuss your upcoming migration plan.

How IT Teams are Dealing with Enterprise Integration

Posted on October 3, 2022 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Today’s enterprise development professionals face new and greater challenges than their predecessors. Demand for digital transformation projects is spiking as organizations strive to maintain a competitive edge in a global, digital-first market. At the same time, budgets are tightening, and skilled developers and system architects are in short supply.

Enterprise integration architecture is being pushed down the ever-growing queue of technology projects IT teams face. Development teams are feeling the pressure as they balance regular systems maintenance with new tasks and innovation, often with only a skeleton crew. And no matter how hard they work, they’re often viewed by other departments as a roadblock to progress rather than business enablers.

But this is why integration is important. Legacy strategies and solutions simply cannot address the enterprise issues of today. So how are developers and system architects dealing with these challenges? What role do they play in enterprise integration strategy, and what will it mean for their departments?

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

Is IT Responsible for Integration?

Enterprise integration can be a game-changer for companies – but it’s no small task. Where does the responsibility of handling the challenges of integration land?

Interestingly, 50% of enterprises expect to rely on internal development teams to implement their integration strategy, but there is some disconnect about who the key player will be. In general, most enterprise IT professionals are relatively evenly split on whether the ultimate responsibility lies with the development team or the C-suite. But when we dig a little deeper, we find disparities between responses from those two groups:

  • 65% of CIOs feel the C-suite is the main stakeholder in integration
  • 72% of developers/architects think IT is the main stakeholder

Determining integration best practices and addressing implementation challenges might not be easy if internal stakeholders can’t agree on who plays the key role.

Implementation of Integration is Lagging

Successful implementation of enterprise integration architecture still eludes the majority of large organizations. Most enterprise development teams are still working without the benefits integration can offer – a problem that will only worsen as staff shortages climb and the urgency to execute digital transformation strategy climbs.

71%

actively planning to adopt new integration technology in 2023

79%

report that system downtime was significant,
impactful, and more than expected

75%

rely on integration to resolve IT backlog projects

59%

reported spending up to one quarter
of their IT budget on integration

*Data in this table, originally published in October 2022, was updated to reflect data from the 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report published in April, 2023.

More concerning still, in 2022, the majority of enterprises who have yet to implement an integration solution (94%) aren’t even considering a specific enterprise integration solution.

Why is Integration Important?

Despite low execution numbers, 57% of organizations say integration is critical to their business strategy, and 93% acknowledge their organization would benefit from it. But why?

Piecemeal Approaches are Failing

Without an integration strategy in place, many IT teams have been forced to resort to short-term fixes for immediate problems at the expense of long-term development solutions. This tactic has only increased the amount of time developers spend on maintenance and crisis response rather than building for the future. 98% of organizations have had to rebuild business-critical integrations in the last year.

Number of key applications running

35%: 1-3
49%: 4-6
10%: 7-9

Number of integrations rebuilt in the last 12 months

50%: 1-5
48%: 6-10
1%: More than 10

Lack of Integration has Negative Effects

Many aspects of business operations and growth can suffer when enterprise integration is absent or poorly implemented. A lack of integration can 

  • Hamper efforts to innovate (48%)
  • Decrease efficiency (48%)
  • Slow response time to market changes (40%)
  • Waste organizational resources (37%)

The first and last issues on this list – hampering innovation and wasting resources – can trap enterprise developers and system architects in a continuous loop. The inability to adopt new technology solutions leaves them stuck maintaining and troubleshooting legacy systems. At a time when skilled developers are in short supply, this waste of resources limits the company’s ability to adopt new tech to support innovation.

Overcome the Challenges of Integration with Digibee

Developers and systems architects want to be the operational heroes that help their organization meet and exceed business goals, not an under-appreciated team other departments only think of when something goes wrong. Enterprise integration architecture can help IT departments eliminate data silos, remove innovation roadblocks, and demonstrate their value to the business.

But alignment from all stakeholders and a clear understanding of best practices, what works, and what won’t are key to leveraging the benefits and overcoming the challenges of integration.

The second annual 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report from Digibee can help. We talked to over 1,000 CIOs, web developers, and system architects from enterprises across the US to gain a deep understanding of the challenges they face and the tactics they’re using. The report gives you a comprehensive, data-based look into current and future trends, as well as guidance on integration best practices.

Download your free copy today

Digibee Employee Highlight Series: Thais Tinelo Bergamo Suzuki, HRBP Customer Success, Brazil

Posted on September 30, 2022 by - Culture, Employee Spotlight

I pegged Thais as a people person immediately after we began our conversation, so it was no surprise to learn she found her calling working in human resources. I could have chatted with her for the rest of the day about her role and the meaningful impact it has on Digibee’s culture, but we are both busy (Digi)bees and had exciting work to get back to.

Thais-Suzuki-Digibee-HR-Customer-Success

Migrate to SAP S/4HANA and Eliminate Your Technical Debt

Posted on September 27, 2022 by - Cloud Migration, Enterprise Integration Solutions, SAP

The SAP S/4HANA migration train is still at the station, and — thanks to industry feedback — it’s there to stay. At least until 2027 when support for SAP ECC ends. However, this welcome respite is just a pause in what for many enterprises will be their most significant infrastructure upgrade in decades.

For some organizations, SAP S/4HANA may be their first serious foray to the cloud and an important step in their ongoing digital evolution. With the agility of the cloud and truly digitized processes to power them, these companies are now able to support new and innovative ways to do business. 

While it’s a given that the shift from SAP ECC vs SAP S/4HANA will require significant investments in time and resources, one of the biggest impacts on enterprises is the technical debt accrued over the years (and even decades) that SAP ECC architecture has been in use. 

1992The first SAP ERP was built based on the SAP R/3 software with various applications on top of SAP Basis (a set of middleware programs and tools). All applications were built on top of the SAP Web Application Server, with extension sets used to deliver new features and stabilize the core.
2004A complete architecture change occurred with the introduction of mySAP ERP with ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) replacing R/3 Enterprise.
2006The latest version (SAP ERP 6.0) was released, with subsequent updates using SAP enhancement packs. The most recent was SAP enhancement package 8 for SAP ERP 6.0 (released in 2016).
2015SAP S/4HANA launched.
2027Support for SAP ECC will end.

Based on the SAP ERP timeline, it is likely there are SAP customers out there who have been using the software for almost 20 years. During this time, an untold amount of customized coding has occurred to better align out-of-the-box SAP capabilities with the specific requirements of the business. Unfortunately, customized coding comes at a cost.

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

SAP Customizations: The Price We Pay

The need for customized coding is attributed to the rigid model imposed by SAP tools requiring additional development work (and subsequent maintenance) to adapt the technology to the processes of the business.

“Custom code is the biggest barrier in migrating or upgrading to a new SAP environment.” 

80% of organizations surveyed
Pillir ASUG Report, 2021

This is borne out in the numbers: 91% of SAP users rely on custom code with 90% of the code that’s in use considered to be “important” to “extremely critical”. In fact, 80% of organizations consider SAP custom code to be their biggest barrier in migrating or upgrading to a new SAP environment.

These customizations are woven throughout the business, facilitating important functions including CRM, ordering systems, inventory management, invoicing, accounting, and many other business-critical processes. In addition, almost half of the applications in question were developed more than six years ago, which means these systems and associated business logic are no longer contemporary.

Then there are the resources needed to maintain this model. In particular, the reliance on the same experts who built the customizations to manage any transitions every time a new or different platform is enabled within the existing environment. This siloing of expertise complicates efforts to innovate, especially when these experts leave the company. 

The numbers
– $800K annual spend (average) on the most important (2-3) custom applications
– 1000+ custom applications for a typical customer
– 20-30 SAP instances running at any one time for some Fortune 500 companies

Such heavy technical debt must be reconciled. Not only does it offset profit margins, it also delays the implementation of modern technologies, which are critical to the company’s ability to compete and succeed in the market.

Eliminating SAP Custom Code with iPaaS

Custom code is most typically used to tie two systems together (also referred to as custom coded point-to-point integration). But what begins as a fairly straightforward “connect point A to point B” exercise quickly devolves into a confusing mess with overlapping connections that are difficult to maintain and impossible to scale.  

The SAP S/4HANA migration is a perfect starting point for enterprises bogged down by the spaghetti-like architecture resulting from SAP custom code. Instead, organizations can leverage enterprise integration platform as a service technology. This model uses API integrations that seamlessly connect current systems and the new SAP S/4HANA platform.  

Bauducco migrated from its legacy ERP system to SAP S/4HANA, integrating 14 systems with the new platform and precluding the need for costly customization work. Learn more →

Although data migration is a critical step in the shift from SAP ECC to S4/HANA, by leveraging iPaaS technology, there is no need for SAP customers to accommodate the customized coding that’s been created over the years, essentially eliminating their technical debt while fast-tracking their SAP cloud migration strategy.

Digibee helps enterprises evolve from customized to simplified integrations. Our iPaaS technology bridges the gap between current systems and new technologies, connecting data and platforms that have never been connected before, regardless of underlying silos or legacy infrastructure.

Accelerate Your SAP S/4HANA Migration

Instead of viewing the extension of SAP ECC end of life to 2027 as a reprieve, Digibee customers are accelerating their migration timelines to more quickly eliminate the ongoing accrual of technical debt. With spending on customized coding reaching (and often exceeding) $1M annually, the faster their migration to S4/HANA, the sooner they can reconcile the technical debt they’ve incurred (and which continues to grow). 

With Digibee’s low code integration model, our customers implement integrations 40% faster, decreasing operating costs with fewer incidents, faster recovery times, and zero downtime. These efficiencies help free up resources to focus on the higher priority S/4HANA migration work. 

Book a demo with us to learn more.

Digibee Integration Platform and Its Market Context White Paper

Posted on September 23, 2022 by - Uncategorized

The Digibee methodology enables integrations between systems by focusing on the data itself rather than on the components and connections.

About this white paper

Systems integration and the exposure of APIs are complex processes that rely on technical teams and IT tools to connect on-premises and/or cloud systems, requiring knowledge, skills, and a high level of security.

Digibee drastically reduces the complexity, enabling integrations between systems by focusing on the data itself rather than on the components and connections. The methodology Digibee has crafted ensures companies have knowledge and control over their data in an agile, simple, and efficient way, while maintaining a focus on future-proof architecture.

Key highlights

Understand the digital transformation challenges organizations are facing and the role of integration:

  • Learn how the right integration solutions enable innovation instead of slowing it down
  • Get an overview of Digibee’s integration platform offerings including intuitive UI, components, cloud-native architecture, automation features, API management, event-driven architecture, support and delivery model, and more
  • Understand the features and capabilities of the integration lifecycle and how they apply to your organization

The benefits of Digibee’s iPaaS

Digibee allows you to reduce the complexity of integrations, so you can focus on your core business
values and strategies while leveraging benefits such as:

  • Robust integration architecture — based on a SaaS Platform
  • Time to Market — impacting the success or failure of organizations and/or strategies
  • Cost reduction — reallocate your development investment to another business priority
  • Operation automation — ensuring accurate data with resilience, scalability, persistence, security and robustness
  • Reduce the impact of integrations on your team – any developer can use the platform, no need for months of training and certification to competently manage an integration platform

Download Digibee Integration Platform and its market context and learn more about how our innovative model and approach to integrations focuses on data flows rather than components and connections, leveraging your organization’s power for more effective data management.