How Your Enterprise Organization Can Accelerate Integration (And Why It Matters)

The idea of system and data integration has reached an inflection point. Most companies have acknowledged the critical role embracing a modern integrated architecture plays in their plans for digital transformation. But relatively few have successfully acted on that understanding.

Data in the 2022 State of Enterprise Integration Report suggests that, while 93% of enterprise IT professionals say their organizations would benefit from integration, only 7% have successfully implemented an integration strategy. The Gartner Integration Maturity Model corroborates that story, noting that many IT departments are still only in the very early stages of developing integration competency – if they’ve started at all. So how do organizations accelerate integration to align their progress with its importance?

Why Accelerate Integration?

The Gartner maturity assessment suggests that approximately 30% of organizations are only getting started with integration, with a significant percentage of those at a point where they have not recognized the value of a comprehensive integration strategy. Why bother with integration? Does it really matter?

The short answer: Yes, it really does.

Poor integrations – or a lack of integration altogether – has a range of measurable, negative impacts on business. We gathered data from more than 1,000 CIOs and system architects, and the most commonly cited effects of a lack of integration included:

• Inability to adopt new practices and technologies that support growth (48%)
• Inefficiencies that directly affect business success (48%)
• Lack of ability to respond to market changes in a timely manner (40%)
• Wasted resources as IT departments focus on maintenance and low-value tasks (37%)

All these responses support the understanding that data integration issues are business issues that will affect growth, profitability, and long-term success.

All these responses support the understanding that data integration issues are business issues that will affect growth, profitability, and long-term success.

The Phases of Integration Maturity

The Gartner Integration Maturity Model breaks down companies’ progress toward implementing comprehensive integration strategies into five stages – and puts those five stages into three overarching phases.

Getting Started

The “getting started” phase in Gartner’s maturity assessment includes two of its five stages:

• Ad Hoc
  • No formal integration strategy
  • Little or no acknowledgment of integration as an interdependent issue or discipline
  • Integration tools are not used or only infrequently used for specific projects
  • Any integration solution relies heavily on custom coding or scripting
• Enlightened
  • Integration is recognized as an issue
  • No formal responsibility for integration
  • IT resources are used for integration solution procurement and support

Standardization

Gartner estimates around 60% of businesses are in the phase, which includes two more stages:

• • Integration is a recognized competency, overseen by a formally defined integration competency center
  • The ICC employs various specialists, selects platforms and tools, and defines best practices
  • The minimum level of Gartner’s integration maturity model needed to effectively meet the growing need for integration

• • Systems in place to support company-wide integration needs
  • ICC evolves into an integration strategy empowerment team
  • ISET selects and delivers integration tools in a centrally governed service

Business Utility

At this final stage, integration is embedded in the organization’s digital culture, and there is an understanding that integration must be a pervasive competency that includes both internal and external partners. The ISET facilitates self-service integration – supporting business users who may occasionally need to perform integration tasks in the completion of their duties.

How to Achieve Accelerated Integration

The findings in Gartner’s maturity assessment and the data in the State of Enterprise Integration report are aligned on the importance of an organization-wide integration strategy – and the fact that many businesses are far from implementation. So how can organizations accelerate integration to reach the levels needed to respond to rising demand?

• Be realistic about what your organization needs and can implement
• Stop thinking of integration as a tool to minimize costs and start treating it as a force multiplier that increases value
• Educate yourself and your team about integration patterns and technology
• Identify use cases for integration in your organization and develop strategy with those in mind
• Determine key functionalities you will use to evaluate integration solutions
• Align stakeholders on the integration requirements that will come with business transformation
• Plan and develop a hybrid integration platform and self-service integration model
• Apply your new capabilities strategically to business opportunities
• Promote self-service integration across your organization and experiment with business user-led initiatives to test and improve your strategy

Remember, a lack of effective integration strategy can cost your business in a variety of tangible ways. Although the road to implementing a strategy can seem challenging, accelerated integration can be achieved if you approach it carefully and methodically.

eiPaaS Can Help Accelerate Integration

Digibee’s unique enterprise integration platform-as-a-service can help your organization accelerate integration and increase your organization’s IT maturity – and we can make it happen faster than any other integration solution.