Blog: Four Keys to Improving Enterprise Data Management

IT departments are constantly trying to find easier and more productive ways to improve enterprise data management and integrate new applications and onboard trading partners. In fact, nearly half of IT decision-makers, according to the 2020 State of Ecosystem and Application Integration Report, say that difficulties in integrating applications and onboarding are keeping them from obtaining new revenue opportunities. And that is something no company can afford if it’s looking to grow.

Key barriers to growth often include slow, unreliable data flows, which results in your business processes grinding to a screeching halt. But how and why does this happen? Perhaps it’s because the onboarding processes are cumbersome, requiring too much manual effort. Or maybe companies have custom-built all their integrations, integrating them outside of their normal IT stack, and now face unreliable – and virtually unmanageable – data connections. 

For those companies out there that find themselves in a similar position, but need to improve application integration and partner onboarding, here are four keys to doing just that.

1. Support ALL Data Flows

There are some companies out there that cannot support EDI, and there are others that strictly do EDI and cannot support their partners’ non-EDI demands. To improve your trading partner onboarding and gain faster time to revenue, you need a comprehensive B2B solution that comes preconfigured with EDI technology as well as robust data transformation capabilities that can support all the data formats that your customers and trading partner networks require. 

A comprehensive B2B solution will enable you to transform any data format from internal applications and partner systems to any format you need, which also helps automate key onboarding processes so your organization can start doing business within hours rather than days.

2. Embrace Cloud Integration Technology 

Other businesses rely on legacy B2B toolkits that are simply unable to support SaaS solutions, such as Salesforce or cloud-based storage repositories like Amazon S3. The key is to adopt integration technology that comes loaded with pre-built smart cloud and SaaS connectors. 

Oftentimes, companies find that the most difficult-to-integrate parts of the business ecosystem can be quickly connected through a unified and minimally complex process by using cloud application connectors, which complement your B2B capabilities to make a more robust and complete integration platform.

3. Consolidate One-Off Integrations

One-off integrations are useful to quickly fulfill a need at the time, but they soon can bog down your enterprise due to their lack of flexibility and ability to integrate into the rest of your business processes. By migrating those scripts into a consolidated ecosystem integration platform, you can rationalize and standardize one-off integrations within a centralized platform. 

You can eliminate those difficult-to-manage, custom-coded integrations with a central solution that shortens onboarding cycles and allows you to focus on what you do best – serving your customers and growing revenue.

4. Leverage Visibility Tools

Errors can happen at any moment, and whether it’s human error or not, problems are going to arise. However, an error can become a much larger issue if you don’t know there’s one until a customer alerts you, are unable to identify what the error is, and do not know how to prevent it from happening again. This is where visibility tools come into play and allow you to track and proactively manage data throughout its life cycle.

Today’s visibility tools are accessible and easy to use, regardless of the person or job title. Comprehensive and content-rich dashboards can help proactively avoid errors, eliminate risk, and mitigate any potential business disruption that these errors might cause. 

All four of these keys to improving application integration and partner onboarding are feasible, but it’s uncommon to find all of these capabilities within one integration platform. 

Why Ecosystem Integration

Cleo Integration Cloud provides advanced B2B and ecosystem integration solutions that meet modern data needs, no matter what industry your business is in. Cleo provides a unique ecosystem-driven approach that enables each organization to view its revenue-generating processes from the outside-in and optimize its trading partner network to create business value.

Instead of getting bogged down with a troublesome partner onboarding experience, or finding it tough to integrate new applications, improve your enterprise data management, gain more visibility, and drive business revenue sky-high with a single-platform ecosystem integration solution.

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Learn more about the value of onboarding in the “How to Rapidly Onboard Ecosystem Partners and Applications” white paper today.

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