Why integration is key to ensuring a first-class customer experience

Doing nothing to improve integration is nonsensical in the digital era, says Ian Currie

In today's digital era, consumer demand has put an increasing amount of pressure on businesses to deliver products and services faster than ever before. And when it goes wrong, it can be a disaster.

Let's take Tesco for example. A recent IT glitch took its home delivery service offline impacting thousands of customers and 10 per cent of all of its online orders. Everyone from festival goers to teachers prepping for sports day were at a loss with many taking to social media to air their grievances. Nothing could be done at the time, but to compensate those affected Tesco provided a £10 voucher for the inconvenience.

Similarly, a software glitch in June brought down national rail ticket machines which prevented thousands of commuters from using them to pay fares or pick up tickets. The reality is these customers will think twice about using the service again and they will start to seek out alternatives for the next time they travel or need a grocery delivery.

Legacy systems letting businesses down

These high-profile examples illustrate how important it is to make sure applications are integrated and efficiently connected to databases across an organisation. When one small part fails, the whole chain can be broken and customers left disappointed and disgruntled.

It is therefore critical that UK businesses tackle the challenge of inadequate legacy systems as a priority. Integration technology plays an integral role in connecting apps, data and devices which will in turn help organisations to ensure they are delivering a first class customer experience.

Unfortunately many companies, still take an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to their IT. But, in this digital-first world, to do nothing is nonsensical. New players in the industry have grown up with a "data-first" approach. They are agile, flexible and meet consumer demands of how they want to engage with a brand, while legacy businesses, in comparison, could soon look archaic.

Customers expect companies to deliver on their promises - whether it's a grocery delivery, a response to a complaint or a train journey. At a time when loyalty to companies is dying, customers will not hesitate to go elsewhere if they do not get the level of service they demand.

Moderisation is imperative

Most IT glitches result from overlooked vulnerabilities within a company's IT system, with gaps in the system often causing the collapse of fragmented applications. This could be easily avoided with an up-to-date IT system. Integrating legacy systems into the cloud and ensuring they can communicate with other systems is a process known as "modernisation".

Modernisation only fails when a mission-critical legacy application cannot communicate with a modern cloud application for sales automation, human resources, or marketing - and this is generally when customers are let down.

To bridge the gap between their existing on-premises systems and the rapidly increasing array of powerful cloud-based enterprise applications and services, many organisations turn to the cloud.

Deploying an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is an ideal way to integrate both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-premise scenarios as it provides the native cloud connectors that on-premise tools lack.

As the Internet of Things (IoT), AI and mobile connectivity continue to grow, iPaaS is able to seamlessly connect mobile and IoT data, applications and devices that often live outside the firewalls of the enterprise.

According to Gartner, most CIOs are still struggling to recognise that traditional integration methods cannot cope with today's rate of innovation and digital change. However, organisations need to realise that cloud-based integration presents the best way to address the core challenges to their application modernisation strategies.

Selecting a fast and flexible integration strategy based on technology such as iPaaS should help to drive efficiencies. For example, any new software installation will be virtually instantaneous and hardware requirements will usually be minimal with little to no up-front costs. Within days or weeks, business leaders will then be able to see the value of the investment and the impact it's having on their organisation - for both employees and the end customer.

In today's highly competitive business world, the stakes are too high to provide anything less than a seamless customer experience. Organisations need adopt an integration solution, built in the cloud, that enables them to quickly and easily transfer data, in real-time, between applications. Only then can a business truly rely on its IT system to deliver the seamless experience its customers expect and deserve - and maybe even turn an occasional customer into a brand loyalist at a time when businesses need it most.

Ian Currie is EMEA director at Dell Boomi