Recently, we hosted a virtual roundtable with an impressive group of IT leaders from industries including education, healthcare, and financial services. We discussed the common challenges around data readiness and connectivity that make it difficult for organizations to instantly provide people with what they want.
But when businesses do it successfully, they create great Integrated Experiences.
A consumer shopping example provides exceptional user engagement: Instacart. You can easily select inventory from multiple stores – drawing on various data sources – all in one place. And then those items are quickly delivered right to your door.
It’s precisely the kind of “wish fulfillment” that we all have come to expect in our everyday lives.
But here’s where the conversation began to crackle to life. What if IT teams could harness that same Integrated Experiences approach for their internal customers – employees? This is where lightbulbs began to flicker above people’s heads.
Suddenly, we were talking about streamlining the new hire onboarding process. Addressing return-to-site obstacles. Automating basic tasks to make employees’ lives easier and enable them to have a more significant business impact.
An IT professional from a well-known financial institution even told the group: “I was trying to wrap my head around the term ‘Integrated Experiences.’ Now, I understand.”
A Difference-Maker for Innovative Organizations
While a relatively new concept, Integrated Experiences is finding traction as a difference-maker for innovative organizations. They recognize the strategic advantage of creating seamless interactions with people inside and outside their organizations. Think of it as the art of the possible.
Connecting systems, processes, and people is what Boomi has always done. After all, we’re the creator of the integration platform as a service (iPaaS) category, and we’ve maintained our position as the industry leader ever since.
Historically, integrating data and processes was enough. It was the behind-the-scenes plumbing system that nobody ever saw. But it also could result in a series of fragmented user experiences that people had to tolerate. They had to talk to multiple systems to accomplish tasks. They visited different places and took numerous steps to get what they needed.
Traditional middleware falls short of our expectations.
Again, think about your personal life. Companies that succeed today excel at delivering a fully integrated experience that’s frictionless and doesn’t even require a lot of thought. The ones that don’t? They’re falling behind.
A Continuum of Services for Connecting Digital Ecosystems
We also don’t need to tell you that integrating a massive volume of data across a complex IT landscape is hard. But not with Boomi. We provide a continuum of services that fill critical gaps to make connecting digital ecosystems possible. Our focus is on solving problems quickly so organizations can deliver a smooth end-user experience.
Our unified data platform addresses three key areas:
Data readiness – We don’t need to tell you about the data explosion today. Boomi DataHub synchronizes, standardizes, and enriches diverse datasets, so you have a “golden record” that’s consistent across your organization.
Pervasive connectivity – Integration is Boomi’s bread and butter. We simplify IT landscapes to break down data silos and create a fabric of connectivity between all systems. Boomi B2B/EDI Management enables you to integrate with vendors, suppliers, and distributors to streamline processes with external partners.
User Engagement – Boomi Flow is where end-users see the magic of Integrated Experiences. You can build employee and customer journeys by automating workflows. Some examples I’ve seen recently are templatized forms to help people return to work safely. We’ve had customers create chatbots that are more intuitive and useful in answering questions. We’ve also seen banks use Flow to digitize the PPE loan process because manual applications aren’t feasible during the pandemic. Also, Boomi API Management rapidly creates, publishes, and manages APIs to any endpoint in a scalable and secure fashion in a hybrid environment.
You need all of these tools in your integration kit for end-to-end data management. It’s why the Boomi AtomSphere Platform can swiftly handle complicated projects. For instance, we recently helped a country pivot quickly to provide digital access to healthcare services for half of the nation’s residents when the pandemic struck. We also enable the American Cancer Society to provide better care for 30,000 people in need annually.
On the other end of the spectrum, our low-code platform provides “citizen integrators” with tools like drag-and-drop functionality that enable smaller Main Street businesses to quickly solve problems without substantial help from an IT team.
The take-home message at the roundtable was that the winners in every industry are all-in on Integrated Experiences. They’re connecting data in thoughtful ways that make their businesses more successful by instantly fulfilling the wishes of employees and customers.
And at Boomi, we’re in the wish-fulfillment business.
For more information on how Boomi can help you create Integrated Experiences, visit our Resource Center.