Digital transformation, or integrating new digital technologies throughout an organization, is becoming increasingly crucial for survival. Modern business operations and processes are increasingly relying on digital technologies. As technology advancements are incorporated into current processes, digital transformation brings important changes to how businesses operate and provide value to their customers.
Often times, business processes are composed of subprocesses and tasks that run through various functions. Various applications can be used to manage these. Processes can become intelligent with machine learning techniques and handle business rules, as well as require user intervention, such as approvals, validations, rejections, etc.
In order to be viable, a platform for digital transformation should be built on an architecture that provides end-to-end capabilities. In addition, it should facilitate easy integration of workflows and human interaction modules, as well as monitoring, evaluating, and easily adjusting modules relevant for maximizing the benefits of digital automation.
To integrate performance, scalability, and high availability, you must deal with many different applications, technologies, and partners. Platforms based on Enterprise Service Bus are better suited to meet these challenges and provide the necessary features, including:
On the other hand, cloud integrations, if best practices have been followed, require less initial costs, exploit better resource management capabilities, and meet the needs of mid- to small-scale enterprises.
Today's clients expect instant service and support from the brands they deal with. Brands should be accessible to clients in a way that suits the client, not the organization. They want seamless experiences across all media channels. It is absolutely essential for companies to be innovative and stay abreast of technological updates and changes in order to meet these consumer needs and wants. Due to this, business leaders are emphasizing the need for digital transformation within their organizations.
The rise of SMAC technologies (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) are driving the change in customer expectations and business innovations.
Social media and communications advancements have made it possible for consumers and organizations to communicate freely. With mobile connectivity, consumers and employees have access to powerful computing power at their fingertips. An analytics engine can be used to transform raw data into actionable conclusions. Businesses of all sizes are able to use powerful customer service, analytics, and organizational tools because of the cloud.
It is true that SMAC technologies may drive change in the digital transformation process, but implementing these technologies without the right strategy for enterprise integration in place may make the process impossible.
Integrating all of your applications and databases based on a common set of standards is at the core of a successful digital transformation. ESBs, short for Enterprise Service Bus, are used to achieve this using middleware.
The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a software architecture that provides structured integration between a common platform (i.e. service bus) and consumer endpoints. There is no standard definition for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) despite their importance and recognition during the integration of heterogeneous systems and applications.
Enterprise Integration digital transformation is based on ESB technologies and architecture, as opposed to traditional point-to-point integration. In a digital transformation project, one must be aware of the pros and cons of ESBs, know their capabilities and limits, and be able to select one of the solutions available.
New applications supporting business processes and operations have been created as a result of the evolution of these technologies and systems. Often, this leads to distributed processes and information belonging to the same entity but unable to communicate effectively.
Consider the simplified case of an O2C (order to cash) process:
- It starts with taking the order,
- followed by processing,
- dispatch and delivery,
- and finally to order payment.
Several other functions may also be involved, including procurement (e.g. for dispatching), sales and marketing (for promoting or pricing), and financial services (for credit control and payment means).
Various applications can manage these functions, including ERP, CRM, SRM and dispatch. Data from orders is spread across these different systems. The enterprise integration transformation orchestrates the entire process regardless of which applications are involved and how they process data, provides consolidated information and provides better analytics and visibility.
To know more about how ENIQUE can help your business achieve Digital Transformation goals, drop us a mail at info@eniqueosolutions.com for a free consultation.