Integration lies at the centre of digital transformation and connected user experiences. However, 80% of respondents to a new survey say integration challenges are slowing their efforts — leading to data silos and disconnected departments. MuleSoft’s annual Connectivity Benchmark Report for Salesfocre surveyed 1,050 CIOs and IT decision makers to better understand these challenges and what organisations can do to succeed amid economic uncertainty.
The findings included:
Integration challenges slowing digital transformation efforts
- Application volume spikes: Organisations are using an average of 1,061 different applications, a 10% increase from 976 identified in the 2022 report.
- Lack of integration is a rising challenge: Only 29% of these applications on average are currently integrated.
- Custom integration costs rise: Organisations spent on average $4.7 million on implementing custom integrations in the past 12 months, a 21% increase from $3.7 million reported last year.
- Siloed apps and data causing headaches: Thirty-six percent of respondents say integrating siloed apps and data is their biggest digital transformation challenge.
The good news? New technology is solving these problems and making integration easier. Some of the world’s biggest companies are using real-time data technologies to integrate, ingest, and store real-time data streams at massive scale, with built-in connectors that bring in data from every channel (mobile, web, APIs), legacy data through, and historical data from proprietary data lakes.
API-led connectivity helps businesses integrate apps and data
- As organisations become more digital-first and cost-focused, the vast majority (99%) are using APIs to integrate apps and data to create exceptional customer experiences and generate revenue.
- Empowering non-technical business users accelerates transformation: Sixty-eight percent of organisations that are ahead of planned digital transformation progress have a mature strategy to empower non-technical users to easily integrate applications and data sources using APIs, demonstrating that low-code tools can improve business agility.
- APIs drive revenue as top-down API integration strategies increase: 38% of organisations’ revenue-generating digital assets, such as ecommerce capabilities and partner portals, utilise APIs, compared to 35% a year ago. Further, 75% of organisations now have top-down API integration strategy.
With rising demands, IT looks to automation to support non-tech workflows
IT teams that manage an organisation’s tech operations are increasingly looking to automation for efficiency and organisation-wide productivity solutions.
RPA — which enables teams to automate business processes and tasks with bots — is one automation technology seeing rapid adoption across enterprises, with 33% percent of organisations investing in the technology.
- Companies report broad automation, integration needs: Ninety-two percent of organisations said at least one department within their company requires both integration and automation.
- IT continues to ‘own’ automation amid digital disruption: Developers (72%), IT operations (65%), and application administrators (49%) are most likely to be responsible for automating business processes.
- Non-tech roles eager for automation: Data science (64%), product (62%), business analysts (61%), customer support (58%), finance (57%), marketing (56%), engineering (56%), and HR (52%) report a need for automation in their departments.
- Reusable integrations offer cost saving opportunities: On average, 47% of organisations’ internal software assets and components are available to developers for reuse, an opportunity for greater integration efficiency.
Businesses have saved up to 109 billion hours every month using automation tools that enable employees to focus on higher value work. By taking a unified approach to integration, API management, and automation, businesses are able to drive efficiency, agility, and continuous innovation.
As digital transformation moves ahead, cost of failure rises
Despite an increase in IT project volume (41% growth year over year), most (69%) organisations are ahead of schedule on digital transformation progress due, in part, to infrastructure improvement. However, the cost of failure to complete projects has risen, adding risk to business’ bottom lines.
- IT teams narrow the delivery gap: Forty-eight percent of teams say they completed all of the IT projects asked of them last year, compared to 44% in 2022. In addition, late project delivery decreased from 52% to 30% year over year. This is potentially a result of businesses continuing to increase investment in IT teams, with an average of $11.7 million.
- Infrastructure investments ease systems change: Just 54% of organisations now say it is difficult to make changes to a particular system or applications because of their IT infrastructure, down from 74% a year ago.
- Cost of failed digital transformation spikes: The average cost of failing to complete digital transformation initiatives now sits at $9.5-million annually, up significantly from last year’s estimate of $6.8-million.
“We’ve seen significant investment and dedication from businesses looking to digitally transform,” said Matt McLarty, CTO of MuleSoft. “Even amid uncertain economic conditions, digital transformation efforts are well underway, and even speeding up in some cases,. However, integration efforts are lagging, and without this, businesses cannot realise the full value of their data and application capabilities.”