Written by
Carla Hetherington
Published on
February 20, 2023
Business process automation, often called business automation or digital transformation, is the technology-driven automation of intricate business processes. Ideally, it results in streamlining and simplifying a business, improving its service quality and delivery, and regulating costs.
In order to achieve this automation and keep up with growth, modern businesses are integrating an increasing number of applications with each passing day. Companies now use over 900 applications on average, significantly increasing since 2021. However, less than 30% of these applications are integrated, resulting in a real threat for those without a proper integration platform. In addition to this, with automation adoption on the rise, businesses are turning to no-code solutions like integration platforms to accommodate demand. Thus, it seems that an iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) is at the core of business automation. But how does this look in practice?
Cloud technology has grown exponentially in the last years, and, according to Gartner, the SaaS industry is now worth approximately $195 billion. Business automation involves integrating various software solutions (SaaS) and cloud applications. The main motivations for implementing cloud strategies are, for the most part, to decrease hardware costs, lessen management burdens, obtain desired deployment times, and promote scalability.
By integrating these systems, businesses can digitalize and automate business processes across Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, HR, and all other departments, allowing companies of all sizes to provide enhanced products and services to their customers. In turn, these integrated systems become integral parts of a business' IT ecosystem.
However, with each new software solution that a business integrates with, the more challenging it becomes to manage these connections and the resulting data exchange. Without a proper platform to integrate all these systems, the benefits of business automation are overshadowed by a major problem: an entangled IT ecosystem.
An entangled IT ecosystem is created by point-to-point custom code connections and consists of data silos and a jungle of crisscrossing data flows. It also involves many partially connected software solutions, managed by multiple integration partners, overlapping and connecting to each other in a disorganized fashion. Because of the imagery that such an entangled ecosystem evokes, it is also known as “IT spaghetti.”
In order to embark on their automation journey, businesses need a solution that can guarantee a fully untangled IT ecosystem and accommodate growth. The Alumio iPaaS is not only designed for advanced integrations but proves useful in any stage of an integration project since entanglements between systems can occur from the very start.
✓ As a low-code middleware solution, Alumio ensures the simplicity of integrations in a way that’s flexible for both developers and non-developers.
✓ The Alumio dashboard provides a visual landscape of all data flows, solving potential black box problems, and allowing C-level to have a clear insight into what operations need specific budgets.
✓ Thanks to the platform’s automated monitoring and logging features, integration errors and API conflicts across all connected software or systems are promptly detected and resolved.
✓ Alumio reduces the business impact of faulty integrations, saving companies significant sums in maintenance costs.
✓ Customer data from all business touchpoints is gathered and provides a visual analysis of the data that can be effectively used to enhance customer experiences and discover areas for improvement.
✓ The Alumio iPaaS will seamlessly integrate e-commerce and ERP systems, enabling the addition of multiple systems like PIM, CRM, WMS, or any other, with holistic data sharing and no data silos.
In this way, Alumio helps businesses hit the ground running with their business automation journey by providing a ready-to-use integration platform to fulfill all software integration needs, helping them connect software solutions for business automation in a fast and flexible way. And, most importantly, at predictable prices.
By offering the technological capabilities required for business process automation, Alumio guarantees businesses a fully connected and untangled IT ecosystem that is ready to be scalable, adaptable, and future-proof.