Modern tech advancements and digital transformation drives have enabled businesses worldwide to digitalize their operations. Previously, most organizations were stuck in their comfort zones and hesitated to adopt new technology, even though they have begun their digital transition on a small scale. It would have made sense a decade ago, considering how difficult it can be to make different systems work together. However, with the emergence of system integration, there’s a dynamic paradigm shift towards data-enhanced digital solutions and technologies. System integrators enable businesses to foster a centralized hub encompassing all their modules, processes, and communications.
In this post, we’ll dive deeper into system integration, its types, and how it benefits modern businesses.
Understanding System Integration?
Most modern organizations are eager to get on board the digital bandwagon. Following the drastic shift towards digital, they’re seeing other businesses, including competitors, digitize their data and digitalize their operations. The only major hurdle in the way is concurrent systems management, which can be solved with system integration.
By definition, system integration is the process of blending or combining multiple individual components or systems into a single, centralized unit working as a whole. Simply put, it encompasses every aspect of your digital business operations and fosters a symbiotic relationship to optimize functionality.
Most organizations use system integration to improve operational efficiency and employee productivity. The idea is to enable real-time, centralized interdepartmental communication to save time and maximize collaboration using a consistent workflow.
The process also connects businesses with customers, stakeholders, vendors, and suppliers to accommodate their unique interests. From keeping track of raw materials to creating personas based on customer segmentation, system integrators can help navigate your value chain and enhance business intelligence.
Types of System Integration
System integration can be classified into three types:
1. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
Enterprise Application Integration is the process of unifying workflows in business applications to optimize data utilization. It involves the use of software and computer systems to facilitate information exchange and simplify advanced processes.
2. Data Integration (DI)
Data integration involves combining data from disparate sources to provide businesses or end-users a unified view of operations and activities. The main objective is to enable permission-based, real-time access to data using any device from any location.
3. Electronic Document Integration
EDI can be defined as the computer-to-computer exchange of business information, usually documents, to enable paperless applications, such as invoices, payment confirmations, purchase orders, and process statuses.
Benefits of System Integration
The influx of sophisticated software applications for businesses has made it difficult for organizations to choose the right option to scale their operations. Moreover, using multiple applications can disrupt the value chain and result in downtimes at different phases of the business lifecycle. Here’s how system integration fixes this problem:
1. Streamlining and Automation
Perhaps, the most significant benefit of system integration is the extraction, authentication, and streamlining of data from multiple relevant data sources. This means users can easily retrieve and utilize data from a single source and simplify their daily tasks.
2. Enhanced Data Integrity
The automatic extraction and synchronization of data results in improved accuracy as it reduces the probability of users accessing obsolete or incorrect data, thus, improving data integrity. The improved data integrity also reduces wait times and manual data entries as the optimized system ensures only the most recent data is accessible.
3. Enhanced Operational Efficiency and Productivity
The last thing any organization wants is a schism or conflict between different departments, affecting productivity and operational efficiency. By modifying all subsystems into a centralized hub, you can ensure every department remains connected at all times for better collaboration.
Thanks to automated extraction and synchronization, teams get access to updated data without manually changing any information. Moreover, all tasks and resources can be stored in one location for simplified access.
4. Cost-Effectiveness
An integrated system can drastically reduce your IT expenditure by minimizing redundant tasks and human errors. Secondly, central storage curbs the need for multiple servers or data banks to store the same information. However, the main cost-related advantage that system integration offers is eliminating the need for upgrading your IT infrastructure from scratch.
A system integrator can work with your existing systems and only make the necessary infrastructure changes required to enable smooth integrations.
5. Scalability
With technologies emerging and becoming obsolete within the same year, you need a scalable and adaptable system to keep pace with the market changes. With more data flowing in, you’re eventually going to need more storage to manage the influx. Integrated systems eliminate replicate data. More importantly, they rely heavily on the cloud, meaning you can opt for additional storage without necessarily upgrading your physical storage.
6. Security
Technologies are becoming more sophisticated, and so are Cybersecurity threats. Multiple subsystems are more at risk of data theft due to inconsistent levels of securities, information priority, and security loopholes. Centralized systems are also vulnerable to theft. However, they’re easier to manage compared to multiple systems. So, you can employ a powerful security solution to ensure it secures every subsystem.
Conclusion
To summarize, system integration curbs the need for multiple subsystems and data storage. It offers a centralized, scalable, and secure system that can improve every aspect of your business, from data collection to insight generation and strategy execution.
At Deltalyz, our team of experienced data scientists, developers, and system integrators use a data-driven approach to help businesses integrate multiple subsystems and centralize operations. We can help create a solution specifically designed to incorporate your operations, processes, and employee capabilities.
Feel free to get in touch with our team for more information and a free quote.
