David Irecki, Director Solutions Consulting APJ at Boomi, tells us when a new digital platform doesn’t deliver what IT promised, it validates any initial scepticism and sinks future projects before they start, and can even hamper entire Digital Transformation projects.
Boomi, a leading provider of cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS), has announced the findings from a new global survey that reveals while 93% of Australian organizations are implementing a composable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) strategy, more than a third don’t have the integration capabilities to drive this modernization.
The independent survey of 1,675 CTOs and enterprise architects, commissioned with Coleman Parks, shows companies are keenly aware that their legacy ERP systems, the backbone of every organization, are struggling to keep pace with business demands.
This has fuelled interest in composable ERP strategies, with nine out of 10 Australian organizations embracing a flexible platform to bridge the gap between legacy and modern applications while meeting business demands in today’s fast, competitive market.
Despite the flexibility composable ERP provides, integrating all applications to work collaboratively and share data is still a challenge. Boomi’s findings suggest implementing an integration strategy to support composable ERP systems is a top concern, with 37% of Australian organizations stipulating their current integration solutions struggle to meet business challenges. Meanwhile, 41% indicate that there is too high a cost to maintain these solutions, followed by 35% finding that they can’t cope with their complex hybrid technology environment.
In addition, as traditional integration solutions require expensive, time-consuming custom development coding, optimization and automation is a high priority for IT teams. Results show 62% of Australian companies are investing in standardization and consolidation of applications, while 74% are pursuing application cloud migration.
“When a new digital platform doesn’t deliver what IT promised, it validates any initial skepticism and sinks future projects before they start, and can hamper entire Digital Transformation projects,” said David Irecki, Director Solutions Consulting Asia-Pacific and Japan at Boomi.
“Organizations across Australia are thirsty to modernize operations, transform user experience and embed agility. But to meet these goals and deliver value, companies need the right technologies that bridge the gap between legacy and best-of-breed applications, and therefore securely share data for improved business intelligence.”
While behind the global average of 83%, 65% of Australian companies affirm that the motivation behind adopting integration technology is to provide the best possible experience for customers and employees.
“The typical enterprise has, on average, 850 applications, of which only 30% are connected,” said Chris McNabb, CEO of Boomi. “The biggest challenge every business faces today is unifying their increasingly fragmented digital ecosystem so they can create the integrated experiences expected by customers, employees and partners. Organizations that remove friction through fast, intelligent data discovery and cataloguing, pervasive connectivity, process integration and automating human workflows are the ones best positioned to thrive as we move beyond the pandemic.”
Other key findings from Australia include:
- By moving their ERP suites to the cloud, Australian organizations are improving business efficiency (39%), increasing IT agility (28%) and driving business growth (33%).
- With Australian companies now committed to migrating ERP suites to the cloud, 64% predict that their ERP system will no longer be fully on-premises by 2022.
- Compared to the global average of 38%, Australian businesses are global leaders in adopting a Hybrid Integration Platform (HIP) strategy, with more than half (52%) already leveraging the technology to gain the flexibility to integrate applications and data wherever needed.
- However, some obstacles hindering modernization are budget constraints, with the public sector (45%) and healthcare industry (41%) naming it a top challenge. In addition, complex hybrid IT environments are a significant hurdle in the retail (41%) and manufacturing (46%) industries.
“After a year of coping with incredible change, businesses recognize that modernization is critical to survival,” McNabb added. “As organizations ramp up efforts with composable ERP, open iPaaS platforms are essential to making it a success.”
