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According to Digibee’s 2022 State of the Enterprise Integration report, while the majority of IT leaders in the finance, manufacturing and retail industries claim digital enterprise integration is a business imperative, only 7% actually have an established strategy. A total of 93% of respondents rated the importance of an enterprise integration strategy to their business as imperative or nice to have.
Although most of the surveyed IT leaders agree that system and data integration are critical for businesses competing in a digital-first world, they seemed to be a loss for a strategy for implementing that integration. Ninety-four percent admitted they didn’t even have any specific technology under consideration.
Justifying the investment is difficult, especially when faced with urgent priorities that produce an immediate return. Resources are limited and existing legacy infrastructure often impedes innovation.
For the respondents whose businesses have prioritized their integration initiatives, only 7% have succeeded in implementing an enterprise integration strategy. Most are still in the planning stage (53%) and intending to activate their strategy within the next 12 months, while over a third (36%) of respondents said that nothing is planned.
The high cost of not having a digital integration strategy
The cost for implementing digital transformation without a solid strategy in place can be high, in terms of both dollars and labor costs. According to Digibee, without a proper strategy, many respondents have taken a piecemeal approach to integration, focusing on immediate needs without considering longer-term goals. Often hampered by legacy infrastructure and other challenges, companies must continually rebuild one-off integrations to keep the business going.
More than half of CIOs and 45% of system architects and developers said in the past 12 months they have had to rebuild integrations for existing key business applications six to 10 times, while 98% of respondents have rebuilt integrations for existing key business applications in the past 12 months.
Even with the roadblocks preventing businesses from starting or completing their system and data integration, the need for such integration is critical. Gartner, in a discussion on the accelerating pace of cloud shift, said, “Technology and service providers that fail to adapt to the pace of cloud shift face increasing risk of becoming obsolete, or, at best, being relegated to low-growth markets.”
Digibee’s research was developed in partnership with research firm CensusWide and is based on a survey of more than 1,000 U.S.-based CIOs, developers and enterprise architects conducted April 27 to May 5, 2022.
Read the full report by Digibee.
