Seven Key Benefits of Application Integration for Business Growth

Imagine if all the different apps on your phone could somehow communicate with each other. Life would be much easier, given the fact that an average person uses nine smartphone apps in a single day.

Sharing data across these apps often becomes a hassle. Even businesses have a hard time making sense of these apps, such as Harrods. That’s where application integration came to the rescue. Facing 8 million transactions each month wasn’t easy for the iconic luxury department store. So, Harrods used an app integration (AI) solution that connected different systems across their operations. Soon, the store could manage its inventory and customer relationships much better. Harrods quickly reduced the downtime and became more operationally efficient.

This is one of many case studies that showcase app integration’s potential for business growth. In this article, we’ll explain what application integration is and how it benefits your business. You’ll also learn some meaningful statistics and get to know similar case studies along the way.

Understanding Application Integration in Business Growth

Many definitions of “application integration,” a term that goes back almost two decades, are circulating the internet. All of them say the same thing, i.e., application integration means connecting independently designed software apps to talk to each other and share data.

IBM describes it as a process in which you take individual apps and systems that were designed to work on their own to actually work with each other. Just think of application integration as IoT (Internet of Things), but apps are communicating instead of embedded devices.

How Does Application Integration Work in Business?

Since organizations typically use hundreds of software apps, integrating them is crucial to keep business operations running. So, businesses that learn how to perform application integration are often the most profitable ones. Just imagine these connectors:

• Turning your data into an IT-compatible format
• Taking order from your eCommerce platform
• Putting it in your ERP for processing
• Feeding it to your EDI for fast delivery
• Dumping it on the finance system for invoicing
• Keeping up the sync of this info with your CRM

5 Levels of Application Integration

Similarly, you can integrate your CRM with marketing automation tools so they can target customers who are most likely to buy from you. Application integration makes your apps act like a hive mind and boosts the results of automation this way. It can be done in these five unique levels:

1. Store data, process it, churn it into useful info, and send it to other software applications.
2. Remove manual task handoffs altogether and use cloud-based automation for better efficiency.
3. Get data from different sources and sync it to keep it flowing consistently between various apps.
4. Limit the flow of data and make sure that each app gets only the right amount of data to remain operational.
5. A single user interface (UI) lets you view different apps’ data and functionalities; employees can now use these apps seamlessly.

That’s why big companies are moving into the sophisticated world of application integration, such as Deutsche Börse and Endress+Hauser. The race toward application integration excellence isn’t stopping anytime soon. 

7 Major Benefits of Application Integration for Businesses

The 2022 release of the Connectivity Benchmark Report revealed some keen insights into the business world’s tech dependency. An average business uses 976 software applications as it races toward a world of better connectivity and faster communication via digitization. However, only 28% of these apps were connected.

What about the other 72% of apps, one may wonder. That’s where application integration comes into play. Businesses that learn how to do application integration win this digitization race. If you’re not motivated to invest in it yet, here are seven major reasons to make you so:

1. Enhanced Productivity

The first major benefit of app integration is that it automates workflows—no more manual data entry between systems after AI implementation. Imagine integrating an eCommerce platform with inventory management so you can get regular stock updates. It’ll reduce manual errors and improve your workers’ productivity.

2. Better Data Accuracy

App integration doesn’t just streamline data entry but also reduces erroneous entries. You can make sure that all your systems have up-to-date information, i.e., a single source shared by all. 

It’s a great way to reduce discrepancies in your system and have regular access to reliable data for real-time decision-making. A leading CRM provider can have customer information updated in their system and consistently reflect it across marketing and sales platforms for better data integrity.

3. Improved Decision-Making

When it comes to decision-making, access to reliable data will help you win, too.

You can consolidate data from different sources thanks to app integration and get a holistic perspective on all business matters. It’s a great way to use advanced data analytics for strategic insights. In fact, startups using data analytics are five times more likely to make better, faster decisions than their competitors.

4. Easier Cost Savings

Let’s not forget about the cost factor here. When you remove manual interventions from the equation, it will automatically lower operational costs. 

As a result, you can skip the need to have different disparate systems. No wonder BPR (business process automation) is helping businesses achieve long-term savings.

5. Scalability and Flexibility

Application integration takes the mark in terms of scalability and flexibility as well. It lets you adapt to new technologies and experiment with various apps hassle-free. These integrated systems can scale with your business’ growth without any major disruption.

If you want to incorporate new tools and processes into your business functioning, make app integration a critical component of your IT strategy right away.

6. Faster Responsiveness

Want to get a unified view of customer data to facilitate personalized interactions with them? It would help if you tried application integration to improve customer satisfaction rates.

App integration gives you quick access to this information so you can address customer needs much more efficiently than ever before.

7. Increased Collaboration

Integration of different apps will also foster better communication and collaboration across several departments by providing a single point of access to information.

This connectivity ultimately boosts teamwork and ensures that stakeholders are aligned with the same data. Let’s say a financial services company integrated its HR and payroll systems to foster optimized communication between departments and improve overall employee satisfaction.

Information exchange optimization is the secret to constant business growth. You can achieve this goal by bringing software apps together and unifying their data. When different apps communicate efficiently, you can easily eliminate data silos and streamline workflows. That’s how implementing app integration will support your business growth strategies.

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