Technology is becoming increasingly flexible, mobile and connected- the evidence is probably either in your pocket or your hand.
Smart devices are now built around a huge number of modern applications, many of which are tied directly into business functions – in essence the line between consumer and business has blurred.
Users are now mobile enough to be engaged practically anywhere on the planet –large majority of the population the primary use of their phone is no longer to make calls.
Yet attitudes to business system and application integration hasn’t evolved at the same pace often resulting in a performance disconnect.
What we’re seeing is that many organisations’ data and software still exists in a siloed combination of on-premises systems and unconnected cloud-servers.
Modern integration is enabling organisations to increase speed of action by integrating those applications, data and processes and giving forward-thinking business a scalable advantage.
Here’s 5 other real-world drivers towards modern integration:
A client of Solidsoft Reply, one of the UKs largest food retailers, were struggling with their existing point-of-sales solution; it was only able to give them purchase data once every 24-hours. This meant booking deliveries or checking and managing stock was a matter of guesswork.
Our modern approach to integration connected their POS solution to a data warehouse, so rather than running a report once a day, they now have a real-time view of stock.
Customers can now select individual time slots for their shopping to be delivered, and our client is able to improve communications and engage their customers better.
Another client of Solidsoft Reply, one of the UKs largest housing trusts, had spent years adding new technology piecemeal as a result of ongoing acquisitions. This led to several different versions of customer data existing across the business – as a result maintaining high-quality tenant services was a time consuming and increasingly expensive headache.
We integrated their existing iWorld maintenance system with CRM as part of a five year project. This connected several different applications improved collaboration between each, which has since helped direct services more efficiently; reducing time and cost of delivery.
This particular client, who manages 10% of the UKs heath service facilities, used to struggle with disparate facilities management systems as they were operating with different sets of data – managing sites efficiently was a challenge because there was never a single version of the truth to rely on.
To help them work more efficiently we created an integration layer that allowed the different FM systems to communicate with each other.
As a result they now have a connected FM system and every application works from the same data. This has significantly increased their efficiency and provided a stable platform from which to grow their property portfolio.
With nearly 20,000 students, a London University were struggling to move student data between different IT systems, which meant that after enrolment, it would take days before students could access vital resources, like the library.
Solidsoft Reply integrated their IT systems together, so as one, they would ingest and distribute student data across the university’s entire infrastructure. The university gained far greater insight into student engagement and could speed up and improve interaction.
It was actually the first solution of its kind and has tremendous potential to solve similar problems that exist across other universities.
This particular approach to modern integration was a game changer for a European organisation tasked with reducing the distribution of falsified medicines.
They needed an end-to-end verification system that spanned across the entire EU, integrated each countries existing technology set-up, and could handle transactions in real-time whilst remaining robust, secure and cost-effective.
Solidsoft Reply used Azure to connect the separate systems in one place, meaning limitless scale of service at a much lower cost of management.
As a result, manufacturers simply ship their medicines across Europe with anti-tampering devices on the outside and tag them with a data matrix code. Once the medicine arrives to the dispenser they can check that code against a supra-national repository for authenticity.
The solution has streamlined processes and drastically cut the threat of falsified medicine.
Modern Integration is able to fulfil many of the drivers for today’s business, with the right approach, and with the right partner.