iPaaS: The true digital transformation enabler

As the economy becomes increasingly digitised, the pace continues to accelerate as organisations adopt new digital transformation strategies. The term ‘digital transformation’ has become well established as the new business frontier to be conquered. It’s the quantifiable difference between an organisation that is stuck in the past and in decline and one that is racing ahead to embrace the future. It’s the difference between an organisation which is hanging on to the status quo, and one which seeks to innovative, excite and optimise.

There’s a myriad of iterations of digital transformation, with organisations of different sizes and in different sectors approaching it differently. Yet, at the heart of any digital transformation project is the same principle – getting access to data and managing that data effectively. Understanding and harnessing data enables organisations to automate processes, to generate and apply new business insights, and optimise their operations – all desirable outcomes of digital transformation initiatives.

However, this data management is often easier said than done. In many organisations, information is still stored in silos, with different datasets ring-fenced from each other and in different formats, making any attempt at consolidation a long and complex one. As any business analyst will tell you, they spend more time frustratingly finding and fixing the data they need, than they do actually working on it and delivering insights.

This acts as a powerful brake on productivity and financial success – it’s like our economy is driving forward with the handbrake on. It prevents key stakeholders from being able to access data from outside their own domain, meaning disparate datasets cannot be unified, so that they may shed light on the real problem being faced or reveal a new business opportunity that would otherwise remain undiscovered or impossible to deliver. It is without doubt, that the movement, transformation and understanding of data – and not the underlying technology – will be the single biggest economic driver for many decades to come.

If data is the real economic driver of the 21st Century, then that data needs to be set free, so it becomes highly visible and accessible, in easy-to-use formats and ‘joinable’ with otherdata from internal or external sources. An expensive and lengthy digital transformation programme is not always essential to achieve this, although it can have clear benefits.

So what is the first step for organisations still dealing with data silos? The common response is to assume that a major IT infrastructure change is needed. This might involve creating consolidated data storage from different parts of the organisation, such as a data warehouse, data lake data vault etc. This will also likely involve reviewing the organisation’s overall cloud strategy so that applications and their data are constantly available in all departments and locations. For an organisation at a particular stage in its enterprise IT evolution, with the time, budget and motivations to undertake such a project, something on this scale might be a good choice, generating far-reaching benefits. However, the danger is that all it will do is deliver newer and more impressively shiny silos, without dealing with the fundamental issues.