Category: Enterprise Integration Solutions

Cloud Migration: Why It’s More Important Than Ever and How to Get it Right

Posted on March 23, 2023 by - Cloud Migration, Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Cloud migration isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. Cloud-based services have become so ubiquitous that we use them multiple times a day without a second thought. But despite the universal nature of cloud computing, what is changing is its importance in the business world.

No longer a “nice to have,” embracing cloud has become vital to enterprises’ growth, success, and ability to compete, as digital natives – companies that have never existed anywhere but the cloud – emerge and leverage new technologies and business models to disrupt the status quo.

Even though most organizations already use cloud technologies in some form, it’s still crucial to weigh the benefits of cloud migration against the risks and challenges it poses to your operations.

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

What is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving digital assets – data, applications, resources, and systems – to a cloud computing environment. 

While we typically think of cloud migration as shifting assets from a legacy, on-premises system to the cloud, cloud-to-cloud migration is becoming increasingly common as enterprises work to reduce complexity, reduce costs, and increase the security of their systems.

Why Move to the Cloud Now?

Your company needs every weapon in its arsenal to continue growing, innovating, and thriving, and the cloud can help you scale, increase agility, grow revenue, and achieve business goals in today’s changing world.

If you’re among the rare handful of businesses that have resisted a large-scale cloud transition up to this point, you might be wondering how much it matters now. Do you really need to make a change?

Maybe your existing infrastructure is good enough – it’s kept your operations on track and your business growing. But the development of new technologies is accelerating, and the pressures organizations must be prepared to face in a post-pandemic world are increasing. 

The cloud may not be a suitable environment for every single component of your technology. But your company needs every weapon in its arsenal to continue growing, innovating, and thriving, and the cloud can help you scale, increase agility, grow revenue, and achieve business goals in today’s changing world.

The Benefits of Cloud Migration

“Everyone is doing it” isn’t reason enough to tackle enterprise cloud migration. But your organization stands to gain a wide range of cloud migration benefits if you make the leap.

1. Resource Scalability

Cloud gives your organization the ability to grow as workloads evolve and demands increase. In comparison, scaling up conventional on-prem solutions means purchasing and installing new hardware, software, storage, and networking equipment.

2. Reduced IT Load

Many cloud providers take on the burden of regular maintenance and updates, meaning your (possibly overstretched) IT department can spend less time on mundane, repetitive tasks and focus on innovation.

3. Cost Savings

Cloud migration can also help enterprises reduce IT infrastructure costs. The scalable nature of a cloud environment makes it easy to right-size resources and adjust as needs change, rather than over-purchasing to ensure capacity for peak demand periods.

4. Greater Flexibility

One key lesson business leaders took from the pandemic was the importance of flexibility in surviving the unexpected. Migrating key data and processes to the cloud means your organization isn’t tied to a specific business location and can pivot quickly when conditions prevent staff from working on-site.

5. Elimination of End-of-Life Hardware Concerns

The pace of technological evolution continues to accelerate, making the life expectancy of investments in IT infrastructure shorter and shorter. Cloud migration puts the onus of updates on your service provider, freeing you from the hassle and costs of dealing with sunsetting solutions.

6. Ability to Leverage New Technologies

This cloud migration benefit goes hand-in-hand with the previous one – the rapid development of new technologies and tools means organizations with the ability to embrace new tech like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Metaverse will have an edge over those who can’t.

Cloud Migration Risk and Challenges

The number one driver of failed or disruptive cloud migration experiences is a lack of planning. An end-to-end strategy is crucial to help mitigate cloud migration security risks, minimize disruption, and keep costs down. 

Before embarking on a cloud migration journey, your organization must consider the specific requirements of any data or workloads you are moving to the cloud, identify any dependencies related to the transition and define your goals for the move. Companies that make the move without a comprehensive strategy face any number of challenges.

High Cloud Migration Costs

Cost savings is a commonly cited driver of cloud migration, but a lack of planning can leave organizations facing higher-than-expected cloud migration costs. Managing spend remains a top challenge for organizations using the cloud, and data suggests approximately 32% of cloud spend is wasted.

Vendor Lock-In

Not all cloud solutions are created equal. Cloud service providers often boast an array of services, but organizations with specific requirements must ensure their needs will be met before cloud migration begins. Signing a contract only to discover the provider can’t deliver what you need is a recipe for disappointment at best – and disaster at worst.

Security Issues

Despite the universality of cloud use, security remains a common roadblock to cloud migration. The process of transitioning digital assets to the cloud can put applications, data, and systems at risk if security threats and vulnerabilities are not carefully considered – and addressed – before migration begins.

Lack of Expertise

The development and execution of a cloud migration strategy are directly related to the complexity of your existing infrastructure. Legacy systems with multiple dependencies can be challenging to migrate, and problems can arise if your migration team doesn’t have adequate expertise in both the system you’re migrating from and the target cloud environment.

Operational Disruptions

Few, if any, businesses can afford to put day-to-day operations on hold while they undertake a cloud migration, but the downtime and delays caused by moving data and systems from existing infrastructure to the cloud can have a significant impact on the bottom line.

Digibee helps you do cloud migration right

The case for cloud migration has never been more compelling: the benefits of cloud migration continue to increase, and the downsides of resisting the transition are becoming more apparent. Let the experts at Digibee help reduce cloud migration risks and optimize your strategy.

Download your complimentary copy of The Future of Cloud Migration for a deep dive into changing migration goals and challenges, tips on measuring success, emerging use cases for cloud computing, and detailed guidance on making the move successful and pain-free.

How a Unified Retail Commerce Model is Reshaping the Industry, According to Gartner

Posted on March 21, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, Retail

Successful retailers are resilient, able to respond to changes in the market with agility and poise. In recent years, the role of technology has proven to be the biggest differentiator, enabling retailers to easily accommodate the unexpected, while less prepared entities simply fade away.

But with new technology and business models comes new methods in how we measure business and performance outcomes. 

In a recent Gartner report, analysts examine this shift. The research emphasizes the role of strategic CIOs and other leaders in creating new, digital KPIs that measure and quantify progress, informing important decisions, and ensuring the success of the business. 

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

Integrate faster with Digibee’s Supportive 3-Step Customer Onboarding

Posted on March 16, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Getting started with your enterprise integration is a daunting task; even the process of planning your enterprise integration is a daunting task. You know it’s a big job, you know there are complex use cases to map out and consider, and you know that whatever solution you choose must be able to expand and adapt as your company grows (even if you don’t know how your company will grow!).

If your company already relies on software from companies that also offer integration tools, at first glance it may seem that staying within that software ecosystem is the simplest way to ensure a smooth customer onboarding plan, and–ultimately–a successful integration. 

On the surface that may seem to be true, and we recognize that most of these large software companies offer integration platforms with very robust functionality capable of meeting the most complex user needs, but there are several challenges that need to be considered at all areas of the integration lifecycle, from building, running, monitoring (…and billing!)

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

developer-working-and-seeing-good-results

iPaaS XL Doesn’t Fit All

Have you heard the expression “Too much of a good thing”? While at first glance the size and complexity of the big integration platforms seems like a benefit to any user, it can cause many unintended and adverse situations to arise. With a great big very complex enterprise integration partner comes a great big monthly bill AND a very complex certification process.

Barrier to Entry

Just like a buffet where you have to make sure you have a big enough appetite to get your money’s worth, when choosing your integration partner you must be sure that the usage will be high enough to offset the high price tag with sufficient integration value. Even some large corporations run the risk of spending more to integrate than they gained through integration, and this becomes more of a peril for small to medium-sized companies, that is if they can even afford the price tag to begin with!

Complex Systems Require Complex Certifications

Taking full advantage of a complex system often requires hiring developers who have specialization, or even gone through a formal certification process, to build and run it. To achieve this, a company either has to spend the time and money associated with hiring these specialized developers, or in training up their own internal developers to pass the three levels of certification before they can even tackle enterprise customer onboarding.

It is important to remember that this training will be an incurred cost going forward regardless of which route you choose. It will also make the process of replacing or augmenting your team members as you grow both slower and more expensive. 

Make a Powerful First Impact with Digibee

We think it is important for companies of all sizes to begin integration, so to support this goal Digibee takes a very flexible approach to pricing with no prohibitively large cost barrier-to-entry. Instead we employ a subscription model that allows you to pay only for the integrations you use. The overall cost of Digibee is on average nearly 50% lower than the other guys, and it includes five times the number of production pipelines – easily replicated integrations made between systems – from the start, so you can realize your integration goals sooner. 

At Digibee we also know that your time to value is key. We ensure your team gains mastery of the Digibee platform without sacrificing fast results through our 3-step onboarding plan: 

  1. We Got You (we build for you)
  2. Together (you build with our help)
  3. You Got This (you build on your own) 

We got you

The Digibee team delivers first integrations

Digibee Subscription
Digibee Integration Platform

Together

Digibee / Customer work together to deliver

Digibee Subscription
Digibee Integration Platform, Integration Delivery, & Empowerment

You got this

Customer is ready to create and deliver integrations

Digibee Subscription
Digibee Integration Platform & Empowerment Team

Step 1: We Got You

In our first step of client onboarding, Digibee will build up to the first set of Pipelines for our customers. By having the Digibee team hit the ground running with your first integrations you will get to see real world examples of the Digibee integration capsules in action with your own unique suite of internal tools and business needs, and give you the fastest time to market possible.

Trying us out is a low-risk decision

To ensure that Digibee really is the best integration partner for you, we complete Step 1 on any of your staging platforms even before you commit to a subscription. Your role is as simple as sharing the data flow and aiding us in the connection to your data sources.

Step 2: Together

In the “Together” phase you begin to build your own integrations with our support. We will be there to guide and educate your team both on an individual level and through the Digibee Foundations Academy portal and Workshop(s). 

Not just “technically” together

At Digibee, we understand it’s important that “together” should include both technical and non-technical stakeholders. This way everyone can have an appropriate understanding of the capabilities of our integration platform to be able to best understand how to implement it in a way that meets your business needs.

Step 3: You Got This

Once your team is comfortable, you are ready to proceed with new integrations on your own. Thanks to our drag-and-drop low-code solutions, even your more junior developers will be able to learn to build, update, and run complex integrations quickly.

Digibee’s Inclusive Pricing Difference

Our subscription pricing includes several valuable bonuses that support you on your customer onboarding journey. Our support services are included in our pricing, so there aren’t any hidden costs.

Comprehensive Support

Even after your integration up and running with your own developers, we are always there for you if you need us! Digibee provides a dedicated customer success team that will help you troubleshoot and enable your team to keep getting the best results and outcomes from our integration platform-as-a-service.

Worried about monitoring for all your integrated pipelines?

Using integrated monitoring metrics and logs, our system actively supports your integration maintenance by flagging potential issues for you in real time. This helps you avoid interruptions for your customers.

Begin your Integration Journey with Digibee

With our subscription model and 3-step onboarding process, Digibee strives to make your enterprise integration as simple and cost-effective as possible.

Do you have more questions for us? Check out this resource: 5 (+1) Reasons to Choose Digibee Over a Traditional iPaaS or feel free to start the conversation and book a demo now. 

The Information Age of Retail: Data, Data Everywhere

Posted on March 14, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, Retail

Retailers are firmly on board the digital transformation train, reinventing how they do business to delight consumers with omnichannel and personalized experiences. Gone are monolithic technology stacks, replaced with agile and composable architecture models that support the success of the business today and into the future.

However, in the rush to digitize, many retailers overlook the unprecedented volumes of data these new (and existing) technologies generate. While plenty of thought is invested in optimizing the customer experience (CX), establishing how to manage the storage and analysis of so much data is often an afterthought.

In this blog post, we examine the different types of data generated within retail, the new technologies that increase the load, and the strategic importance of managing data for a healthy and profitable business. 

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

Retail Data and Why It Matters

Retailers generate data across the entire operation, front and back. Every pick, click, and customer interaction; every SKU, sale, and shift in inventory generates more data that must be managed.

There are three categories for retail data, depending on the source:

  • Structured data is organized and usually stored in a database, file, or spreadsheet. Examples include point-of-sale, inventory, product hierarchies, etc.
  • Unstructured data is not organized and is saved in its native format. Examples include customer reviews, location data, tweets, pictures, hashtags, etc. 
  • Semi-structured data straddles both categories. It is not captured or formatted using conventional methods. However, there may be information associated with the data, such as metadata tagging. Examples include emails, XML, zipped files, etc.

Once combined, the collective is referred to as Big Data, with emphasis on the “big”. 

Consider the world’s largest retailer: Walmart. The company collects 2.5 petabytes of unstructured data from one million customers every hour. Add to this the data generated by 245 million customers visiting 10,900 brick and mortar stores, supplemented with 10 active websites, and the scope of the company’s Big Data is astounding.

The collected information serves Walmart well. For example, in-house analytics systems analyze close to 100 million keywords each day to optimize bidding, factoring in millions of products and hundreds of millions of customers from a range of sources. On this single data initiative alone, Walmart has produced a 10-15% increase in online sales for $1 billion in incremental revenue.

Getting Your Data House in Order

Although few companies compete at the level of a Walmart, the need to collect and integrate data from a range of data-generating components is an absolute requirement for digital transformation, regardless of retailer size.  

Enterprise integration is a critical enabler in achieving these outcomes, streamlining the collection of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data across the operation to contribute to a Big Data collective.

A good example is Payless, an international, self-serve footwear retail chain, with almost 4,500 stores in 30 countries. The retailer implemented enterprise integration platform as a service (eiPaaS) technology to connect a new e-commerce platform within its existing retail infrastructure. 

The result is a seamless flow of data to and from the system, supporting a consolidated database for better analytics and insights. With a contemporary e-commerce platform firing on all cylinders, Payless is able to provide an improved customer experience, even during surges in sales on Black Friday and other high-volume days. 

With enterprise integration, retailers benefit from a rich store of ever-green data they can continually analyze to uncover meaningful insights. These include:

  • Personalized customer experiences
  • Trend and spend predictions
  • Forecasting demand
  • Pricing optimization
  • Customer journey insights

New Retail Tech = More Data

Even after your data house is in order, the work doesn’t stop. More customers mean more digital interactions, spawning even more data. Most impactful is the adoption of nascent technologies, a key enabler for digital transformation initiatives. 

Today, ecommerce websites and remote interactions generate the biggest share of retail data. However, brick and mortar stores have become data generators in their own right. Here are just a few examples of innovative instore technologies entering the retail domain that contribute to Big Data:

Digital & curated shopping

The Nike NYC House of Innovation store provides shoppers with an immersive, digitally powered experience including interactive geozones that are navigated by scanning QR codes via mobile phones. 

(Photo credit: Nike)

The space includes a Nike Speed Shop, where customers reserve items online, then try them on and buy them in-store. Pre-selected merchandise is placed in lockers that the customers open with their smartphone.

The store also has a customization space where shoppers personalize products with the colors and features they want.

Automated checkout

Everyone’s familiar (though maybe not enthralled) with self-checkout kiosks. Automated checkout is upping the game, with computer vision, deep learning, and sensor fusion technology to automate payment and checkout. 

(Photo credit: Amazon)

Amazon is an established early adopter, where customers enter a store, select items, and leave without queuing or checking out. Payment is automated via the Amazon Go app.

Inventory Analytics Robots

The adoption of new technology isn’t limited to customer interactions. Sam’s Club relies on automated powered robotics with artificial intelligence operating systems to analyze shelving units across its stores. 

(Photo credit: Sam’s Club)

Retail-Sams-Club-powered-robotics

Data collected is used to verify pricing accuracy, confirm product locations versus the floor plan, and monitor stock levels. 

Though radically different in terms of tech and use cases, all of these innovative retail technology models have one thing in common: data. And plenty of it. 

Managing so many diverse data sources has become a business imperative, providing retail organizations with insights that help inform important decisions, today and in the future.

Digibee eiPaaS technology enables a resilient and agile data strategy that easily grows with your organization, regardless of size or scale. We help our customers evolve their business, leveraging Digibee’s low-code eiPaaS to integrate modern systems with existing technologies, streamlining the flow of data across the operation for a singular view of the business.

If you’re interested in how Digibee can help your retail organization, we are happy to show you how. Book your choice of a discovery call (15 minutes), custom demo (30 minutes) or a deep dive (60 minutes) to learn more.

Why Digital Transformation is Important and How to Make it Happen

Posted on March 9, 2023 by - Cloud Migration, Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Once dismissed as a meaningless buzzword among tech circles, digital transformation has become a high priority for organizations of all sizes, across all verticals. 

The importance of adapting often-siloed legacy systems to communicate with new technologies and tools became painfully clear amid pandemic shutdowns, and the new reality of hybrid work models and digital-first business has forced even those most resistant to change to acknowledge its value.

But what is digital transformation, really?

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

How to Reduce the Time and Cost of Your IT Integrations

Posted on March 7, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Graphic of bar chart

Are your dreams of dollar signs turning into nightmares as you watch your cumbersome IT integration projects drag on for months (or what seems like years)?

You may have initially thought a traditional integration solution was the silver bullet that would solve all of your IT issues, but now you’re realizing that you may have missed the mark by partnering with a sole integration provider.

Pro-Code Versus Low-Code: What’s the Best Solution for Your IT Integration?

Posted on March 2, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Are your professional developers spending all of their time writing tedious code for in-house IT integrations? Or maybe they are spending hundreds of hours on training and certification for traditional enterprise integration platform-as-a-service (enterprise iPaaS) solutions, when they could be spending their costly time on more valuable pursuits for the company.

As you contemplate your enterprise integration strategy, you need to consider all of the factors involved. These can include the technical abilities of your current staff, your available resources, the project’s total economic impact and return on investment (platform ROI), and how much time you can dedicate to the IT integration project – at each stage of the ‘build, run, monitor’ process.

In developing your integration strategy, one of the first steps is determining what type of IT integration solution is best for your business.

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

What is a Legacy System and Why is Everyone So Worried About Them?

Posted on February 23, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT, SAP

Are legacy systems really the end of the world? For many companies, they are business-critical technologies that keep operations humming and revenue flowing. But for all the bad press they get, you might think they’re set to be the downfall of business as we know it. 

Are they? Not necessarily. Can they be? Absolutely.

But to fully understand what legacy systems are and why everyone is so concerned about them, we’ll have to dig a little deeper. This post will look at what a legacy system is, provide some examples, and examine the value, risks, and challenges associated with them.

Before we can discuss the risks and challenges associated with a legacy system, we have to establish what we’re talking about. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a widely accepted definition of legacy systems – which can make it challenging to determine if it’s an issue at your organization. 

monitor-with-code-developer-computer-programming

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

What is a Legacy System?

Legacy systems include computer systems, programming languages, applications, processes, or hardware that are:

  • Inefficient to support or maintain
  • Based on outdated technology
  • Not compatible with more modern technical solutions
  • Typically no longer available for purchase
  • Often essential for day-to-day operations (more on this later)

Pro Tip: Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a system or tool isn’t “legacy” because it’s only a few years old. Any technology that fits the above criteria is considered a legacy system.

Legacy Technology Examples and Use Cases

Legacy systems are everywhere. Any business that existed before fully-digital companies began emerging has had to – or will have to – update older systems if they want to compete in today’s digital space. Aging infrastructure and outdated technology comes in all shapes and sizes, but here are four more well-known legacy technology examples:

1. On-Premise SharePoint

Microsoft has announced the end of life for its 2013, 2016, and 2019 SharePoint Servers, with the final lights set to go out in July 2026. Research suggests that a significant percentage of finance, government, healthcare, and manufacturing organizations in North America are still using this tool – and many have no plans to migrate to something else.

Once considered ground-breaking, the on-premise version of SharePoint has become challenging (and expensive) to customize. It doesn’t scale well and lacks many reporting and oversight capabilities that are now considered standard.

2. COBOL

If you’re connected to the financial sector, you’ve probably been hearing arguments about COBOL for at least a decade. This programming language has been around for over 60 years and powers billions of ATM and credit card transactions annually.

COBOL’s age is not the issue. Skilled developers are already in short supply, and those with the expertise to translate COBOL code into more widely used modern languages are even more scarce. Even experienced developers can find it challenging to translate COBOL because of the unorthodox way it uses some standard coding statements.

3. SAP’s On-Premise ERP

Like SharePoint, SAP has announced plans to sunset support for its on-premise ERP in 2027. The existing model requires companies still using it to invest heavily in the development and maintenance of customized code to adapt it to today’s business processes. 

91% of SAP users say they are dependent on custom code, and  90% of the code in use falls somewhere between “important” and “extremely critical.” The costs to keep using the tool are already high and will only increase as new technologies and trends emerge.

4. Blackberry Phones

There was a time when 43% of smartphones in the US were Blackberries. Although the brand’s downfall was swift when it failed to adapt to changing consumer expectations driven by new models from Apple and Samsung, the company only finally announced the end of support for its operating system in January 2022.

Limits on Blackberry hardware and the company’s refusal to embrace tools that customers wanted – think keyboard in place of touch screen – cost the company market share and ultimately made the once-iconic phones obsolete.

Why Do Businesses Use Legacy Tech?

The need to replace systems that are outdated, challenging to support, and inefficient to maintain and use may seem obvious. So why do businesses resist legacy system integration and hold on to platforms and tools like the legacy technology examples listed above?

There are a number of reasons:

  • “It still works!”

This is a common refrain among executives who resist digital transformation in favor of the tools they know and trust. It can be hard to recognize (or justify) the need to overhaul major systems when the existing solution – which employees are used to – appears to be getting the job done.

  • “We can’t afford to change!”

Balancing revenue and costs is always a consideration. The price to upgrade, or worse, replace, business-critical tech is often high. In many cases, companies have invested substantially in existing systems, so bearing a slow rise in maintenance costs may seem preferable to scrapping it all and starting fresh.

  • “Changing will disrupt operations!”

Legacy systems often play a vital role in day-to-day operations, so the prospect of shifting to a new solution (whose reliability is unknown) can be daunting. If sticking with older tech might be disruptive eventually, companies may take their chances rather than endangering operational continuity with a major change.

“Replacing legacy applications and systems with systems based on new and different technologies is one of the information systems (IS) professional’s most significant challenges. As enterprises upgrade or change their technologies, they must ensure compatibility with old systems and data formats that are still in use.”

Gartner

Legacy System Risks and Challenges

Concerns about transitioning away from legacy systems are not unfounded, but the risks of sticking with outdated architecture – however “tried and true” it may be – are not inconsequential either.

Businesses that continue to rely on legacy technology will see problems related to:

  • Maintenance 

The cost of maintaining outdated systems will only rise as time goes on, support is discontinued, and fewer IT experts with the skills to keep legacy systems working – and connected to more modern tools – are available.

  • Performance

The speed at which technology evolves is increasing exponentially. Legacy systems that don’t fail outright still won’t be able to keep pace with rising standards and rapid changes to market trends and consumer demands.

  • Integration

The pandemic only accelerated an existing shift to doing business online, and a dependence on legacy systems can hamper digital transformation efforts and make adopting new solutions more challenging.

  • User Experience

Reliance on aging or outdated platforms can negatively affect the experience you offer your customers. And the brand loyalty you’ve built can only carry you so far when you can’t meet expectations.

Digibee Can Help

Digibee’s innovative low-code enterprise integration platform-as-a-service removes the roadblocks legacy systems put in the way of your company’s growth and success. 

Our reusable integrations let even junior developers connect legacy systems to new technologies and tools to modernize your architecture and accelerate digital transformation without downtime or disruption to your operations. Book a customized demo and discover the Digibee difference for yourself today.

Easily Connect the Dots Between Build, Run, and Monitor with Digibee’s Intuitive iPaaS Platform

Posted on February 21, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT

Complex Problems = Complex Solutions.

Trying to work out all your integration business use cases is intense, and trying to get a full picture of all the platforms you need to connect to is no easier, we get it. To make sure the integration itself doesn’t add to the complexity your team faces, we’ve worked hard to create the most elegant and straightforward integration platform possible (without sacrificing the ability to adapt to tough or unique problems, we promise!). 

At Digibee we have taken a full lifecycle approach to guide your team through Building, Running, and Monitoring your integrations in a way that is intuitive and helps you “connect the dots” to see the big picture of how your integration is working in near real-time. We also understand that every company is structured a little differently, so versatility is a core attribute we have factored into every step of our integration platform.

In this blog post we give you a guided tour through our Build, Run, Monitor Digibee interface to help you visualize how our unique enterprise iPaaS can support you, however your company is structured, whatever your integration needs are, and wherever you are in your integration lifecycle.

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

Build Your Pipelines, Build Your Realm 

Our build platform is where it all begins. Whether your developers are creating a new integration or updating an existing one, this stage keeps all your integrations organized and easy to find. It is also where you can specify exactly who should be allowed to access each of the areas of the Digibee platform using our flexible realm structure that lets each individual see exactly what they need. 

Within a user’s realm we keep pipelines nice and organized under their respective projects, making it a snap to see where each integration is used in your business. Our intuitive drag and drop canvas coupled with Digibee capsules’ powerful pre-packaged business logic extracts the complexity out of the builds, but retains the sophistication. build-screenBuilding a new pipeline with Digibee’s low code integration platform is easy for developers to master, and to ensure their learning curve is pain-free our Platform-as-a-Service subscription includes support – so, we build these pipelines alongside your team until you’re ready to work alone.

Our Build Platform in Action:

Our work with the international shoe retailer Payless is a great example of what our build platform can accomplish, and how even though our enterprise integration platform may seem simple, it can scale up quickly to meet the biggest integration challenges. 

For Payless, Digibee was able to deliver integrations for a new e-commerce platform with more than 200+ stores in 15 countries. With the efficiency of our low-code drag-and-drop interface we built their integration solutions in less than 30 days!

Get Up and Running with 3 Quick Decisions

To help your team run your integrations going forward (without wanting to just run away), we’ve made deploying an integration as simple as these 3 quick decisions before you click ‘Deploy’;

  • What size?
  • What amount of concurrency?
  • What level of parallelism?

If your team later finds they need to adjust an integration pipeline’s size, concurrency, or level of parallelism, this can be done any time by simply going into the pipeline and updating the settings!run-screenJust like our Build platform, our Run platform’s UX keeps things visually organized and easy to understand. All the pipelines or projects a user has been granted access to appear in their realm organized under their projects. At a glance they can see key stats of each pipeline such as the deploy date, version number, and number of replicas. 

Our runtime environment is containerized – this means that your integrations aren’t sharing compute power/speed with anyone else, so even at peak times there is no drop in performance.

Our Run Process in Action:

Bauducco, the largest manufacturer of baked goods in Brazil, partnered with Digibee to help alleviate their pain points when migrating their legacy system to SAP S4/HANA. With 5 manufacturing units, 12 branches and 7 strategic distribution centers there were a lot of moving parts for Bauducco to keep on top of. Combined with various manual processes, their legacy system was difficult to run and prone to inaccuracies. 

Digibee built an enterprise iPaaS platform that effectively integrated Bauducco’s legacy system with SAP/S4 HANA while simplifying the existing SAP landscape, keeping their enterprise integration platform simple to run. Greater stability was achieved within the environment, and reduced the projected time and cost of the integration project by over 30%, all with zero downtime.

Discover New Insights with our Monitor Tools

Once an integration platform is built and running, the quality of the insights gathered through monitoring can be one of the most impactful tools in learning how to adapt and grow. Understanding this, we have designed an intuitive and powerful monitoring platform to work in conjunction with our Build/Run capabilities.

On our Monitor tab, your team can easily see at a glance how all your integrations are performing both in real-time and historically. The visual display and performance metrics make it simple to detect issues, or areas for optimization. We’ve also made error-handling more streamlined through the ability to deliver events directly to enterprise ticketing and monitoring solutions for remediation.monitor-screen

Our Monitoring Tools in Action:

Digibee partnered with Weir Group, a global mining technology leader, to create a flexible integration to support critical workflows. The work required several global corporate systems be integrated with local systems to facilitate a smooth and bi-directional flow of information through their integration platform. 

One of the items integrated was their MES (Manufacturing Execution System) which provides data and real-time insights into a company’s product manufacturing process. To ensure that the company didn’t lose any of this vital MES information, Digibee was able to implement near real-time alerts within their enterprise integration platform to flag potential integration flow issues before any disruption occurred.

Improve all phases of your Integration lifecycle with Digibee

To learn more about our intuitive Build-Run-Monitor enterprise integration solutions and how our adaptable UX empowers your team on all stages of your integration journey, take the Digibee Challenge:

Give us the integration project that you can’t get to until next year, but you need next quarter – and we’ll show you the Digibee difference by next week. 

Book your 15-minute Discovery Call, 30-minute Custom Demo, or 60-minute Deep Dive today!

3 Ways Retail IT Solutions Can Help Improve Customer Experience

Posted on February 16, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions, IT, Retail

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Customer experience is the key to unlocking profit in the retail industry. While keeping shoppers happy with your brand has always been a high priority for retail organizations, its importance has reached unprecedented levels.

And as economic uncertainties persist across the US and around the globe, the ability to deliver the optimum experience consumers expect in exchange for their business has become a matter of life or death for many businesses. So how do you optimize your customer’s experience – and what is the role of IT in retailing?

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

Examining the Retail Tech Landscape

Technology is simultaneously retailers’ most powerful asset and greatest foe. Established brands face new competition from digital natives that disrupt traditional business models with direct-to-consumer options. Technological developments in every other aspect of their lives have led shoppers to demand personalized service, rapid responses, and experiences customized to their individual needs and interests.

2022 was a year of digital transformation for many retail brands, and 2023 promises more of the same as companies embrace:

  • Click and collect shopping options
  • Data-based personalization
  • Omnichannel commerce
  • Artificial intelligence and virtual reality
  • Links to external marketplaces
  • Emerging tech like NFTs and the Metaverse

Digital technology and retail have become inseparable. Brands must embrace tools that increase efficiency and personalization to meet customers where they are – or resign themselves to obsolescence.

3 Steps to Improve Customer Shopping Experience

That list of trends and advances in retail tech may seem daunting. If your brand is still struggling to balance in-person service with ecommerce and social shopping, how will you possibly leverage virtual reality or the metaverse?

One step at a time, that’s how. Regardless of where your brand currently lives on the spectrum between legacy brick-and-mortar and fully virtual, here are three key steps to help you deliver the retail customer experience your shoppers demand.

1. Modernize Your Architecture

Identify where and how your IT architecture is holding you back from leveraging new tools and trends. Is your data still locked up in silos that prevent brick-and-mortar teams from seeing how shoppers engage online? This is a major roadblock that must be moved. Ensuring all your systems are connected and communicating – a shift to cloud-based tools and applications will support this – has a significant impact on the customer experience you deliver.

GJP Hotels & Resorts knew there was a problem when customer complaints about the lengthy check-in process increased. The negative customer experience threatened the company’s future – and they took action.

The company leveraged Digibee’s eiPaaS to integrate their existing property management tools and systems with self-serve digital portals that reduced customer wait time by 80% and complaints by 100% in the first year of deployment.

 2. Empower Your Team

Maybe you’ve already started to access new retail IT solutions. But new tools often come with added deployment and maintenance requirements. Are you dependent on an external vendor to help you keep pace with digital natives? Or is the race to combine digital technology and retail putting increased load on your already overworked development team?

The IT skills shortage that developed post-pandemic is likely to persist, so a crucial part of optimizing CX is ensuring your organization can keep pace with new trends and market changes.

  • Empower your developers with tools that let them deploy and maintain integrations and data knowledge in-house
  • Adopt an IT infrastructure that delivers the agility and flexibility to leverage new opportunities
  • Rethink strategies and solutions that leave you dependent on hard-to-find talent you might not always have

3. Simplify Your Systems

There’s a reason the K.I.S.S. principle is so ubiquitous. The shift to a fully integrated commerce solution doesn’t need to be complex or costly. Low- or no-code tools and platforms make it easy to build and deploy the applications and integrations your business needs to keep systems connected and customers happy.

Payless recognized the need to integrate their ecommerce and physical stores to deliver a consistent customer experience but faced challenges dealing with disparate legal and fiscal requirements of the 15 countries they had stores in.

They came to Digibee for an integration solution that was secure, reliable, and capable of scaling to accommodate seasonal sales spikes. Digibee delivered a completely secure ecommerce solution spanning 200 stores in 15 countries in less than 30 days.

Let Digibee Boost Your Retail IT Solutions

Digibee’s enterprise iPaaS is a full life-cycle, low-code integration solution that empowers brands to embrace the retail IT solutions they need to compete. Regardless of your organization’s current IT maturity level, we can help you modernize legacy solutions and integrate systems to leverage all the latest digital tools.

Download a complimentary copy of Fully Integrated Commerce for the Modern Retailer for details on how Digibee’s enterprise iPaaS can help improve your retail customer experience online and in-person, or book a custom demo to see our solution in action.

Forrester TEI Report: Enterprise Integration for Financial Services

Posted on February 14, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions

In a recent engagement with Forrester Consulting, we asked the experts to put hard numbers behind the value Digibee delivers to our customers. The result? The Total Economic Impact™ Of Digibee’s Integration Platform as a Service (eiPaaS) report1, a detailed examination that quantifies the upside of Digibee’s eiPaaS technology. 

In providing context to the research, Forrester conducted interviews with existing Digibee customers, taking what they learned and using it to create a composite customer: a financial services organization that we’ll call FinCo. This blog post explores in detail the total economic impact afforded to FinCo after implementing Digibee. 

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How to Gain Faster Time to Value with Your IT Integrations

Posted on February 7, 2023 by - Enterprise Integration Solutions

Is the excitement of your IT integration starting to wear off as the months of disruption and training drag on? Selecting the right integration partner is an important decision that requires diligence, time, and patience. You may have thought that your current integration strategy would be the quickest, easiest route since you already had a relationship with your integration partner.

Now, the months-long implementation and upskilling for certification, along with your stagnant and ever-growing IT backlog may have you second-guessing your decision.

Don’t worry. Even as you continue with your current integration, there is a way to stay on top of your regular workload, burn your IT backlog and get faster time to value for your IT integrations. Here’s how.

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