7 business benefits of the Alumio integration platform
What problems are modern businesses facing?
In our rapidly evolving digital world, companies outpacing all competitors have a “Data-Driven, Digital First” approach. These companies invest in developing connected IT infrastructures powered by cloud applications and software solutions (SaaS). However, manually creating these business-critical software connections or data integrations via custom code leads to a messy and entangled IT landscape that cannot accommodate growth.
As such, the current situation for many organizations is that manual resource-draining processes bog down their businesses or are only partially connected to business-critical software. These companies do not have holistic data access nor the ability to utilize business data across all their systems or business processes, both prerequisites for digital growth.
To help tackle this problem, most modern businesses are moving towards a next-gent software integration solution called the iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service). An iPaaS provides scalable and secure IT infrastructure to seamlessly connect software, cloud apps, or data sources across on-premises and cloud environments, and many companies have chosen Alumio as their preferred iPaaS.
Why do businesses choose Alumio?
The short answer is that Alumio provides companies with a flexible, cost-effective, and future-proof solution like no other. The platform helps companies create, manage and organize all their software and data integrations on one central platform. It enables complete real-time data access across all connected systems in their IT ecosystem and empowers digital growth.
The long answer, and the best way to unpack the information, is to divide it into 7 key business benefits, which are the following:
Be API-driven
Connect multiple software rapidly
Become agile
Create a scalable IT ecosystem
Ensure cost-optimization
Be privacy compliant and secure
Benefit from AI and ML
Keep on reading to learn all the details!
1. Be API-driven
It’s an API world, and we’re all just living in it. The digital world has become more interactive and demanding than ever, with customers seeking holistic user experiences where all the different applications and digital services are seamlessly interconnected. The secret behind this interconnectedness of software and cloud applications that customers experience are APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Also known as data stewards, APIs help any two different software or applications converse and exchange data and services; they are translators of sorts!
But…Why do organizations need API-driven business models?
In short, APIs hold the key to digital growth. An API-driven strategy is crucial in obtaining successful digitalization because it significantly reduces the need to develop complex connections between applications and eliminates the need to build new software solutions from scratch. In this regard, APIs help companies avoid having to reinvent the wheel by allowing them to quickly adapt and integrate a wide range of services and solutions to eliminate business roadblocks and achieve bigger goals.
“APIs are now central to application architecture because they enable loosely coupled integrations, as well as being the data conduits behind mobile apps and many IoT devices.”
How does Alumio help simplify API integrations?
By allowing businesses to configure the APIs of any software or systems they wish to connect to on a user-friendly interface, Alumio makes it possible to create, monitor, modify, and manage software integrations to suit evolving business needs. To improve the security of APIs, Alumio also provides automated monitoring and logging that helps instantly detect API conflicts or integration errors in an IT landscape. This doesn’t just significantly lower the total cost of developing and managing integrations, but it exponentially speeds up how companies can connect with software to automate their business processes, significantly improving the time to market.
Read more about how Alumio helps lower the total cost of ownership with your system integrations.
Benefits of integrating APIs using Alumio in various market segments:
Retail
Alumio can integrate the APIs in the domain of Retail to expose product, inventory, and pricing data to display on their website and support order entity, payment, and shipping data from online customers.
Finance
A bank or investment firm uses APIs to view a customer’s financial information - such as account balances, transactions, and holdings. An API also handles financial transactions through the institution, such as bill payments and transfers.
E-commerce
Integrating e-commerce systems via their APIs helps digitalize processes like Order entry, Order management, Shipping, Invoicing, Returns, Issue management, Tracking, Warranty, Payments, and Credits. It also enables “How-to wizards” to present great walkthroughs.
Supply chain
Connecting APIs in the supply chain allows businesses to share data such as a package’s current location and delivery ETA - think FedEx, UPS, and DHL. Businesses can also couple such data with other APIs that expose warehouse data, such as current inventories, to determine when to place new product orders optimally.
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2. Connect to multiple software rapidly
The most obvious benefit of Alumio is that it helps connect multiple software on one platform in a simplified and streamlined fashion, resulting in an organized IT landscape that empowers business automation.
Integrating without Alumio
Creating a successful integration strategy to digitalize business processes involves connecting the right software, systems, or data points to match diverse business requirements. Traditionally, these software or system integrations involved creating point-to-point connections with custom code that could only be developed, understood, and managed by an IT expert. This could include connecting a company’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system and its e-commerce platform to automate real-time data sharing of product information and updates, inventory management, order data, and many other processes. However, in order to achieve proper digital growth, the company would also have to integrate with other software to automate many other areas of the business. In turn, the number of software solutions to be integrated would only increase over time, with newer digital software being constantly released to the market.
Integrating with Alumio
The Alumio platform doesn’t just help untangle IT landscapes by organizing all software connections and data on one central platform; it also helps present a framework for expanding and organizing all integrations in a fast, flexible, and future-proof way.
3. Become agile
Alumio allows businesses to be agile and achieve a faster time to market by providing users with the freedom to add or interchange software integrations, build faster proofs of concept, and experiment with new technologies.
Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent."
Being agile refers to an organization’s ability to adapt to market changes quickly - both internally and externally. A good example of an agile company is one where employees can explore multiple ideas and approaches, experiment with new software to target new markets, adopt new technologies, or attempt to digitalize business processes. However, while being agile greatly benefits companies in the short term, adopting new solutions to solve problems can become problematic in the long term without the right IT infrastructure, and entangled IT landscapes can become a real possibility.
Experience agile software implementation with Alumio
Historically, one of the problems with replacing legacy software or implementing new software is that the integrations are created via custom code and are connected to several systems and complex and large-scale ERP systems. These outdated, convoluted connections between bespoke systems make creating continuity and standardizing data across the organization a difficult task.
Alumio helps agile organizations quickly add, remove, or interchange software integrations from one platform without losing data integrity and eliminating data silos by centralizing and normalizing the data across all connected software integrations.
Proofs of concept can be quickly realized by experimenting with new solutions and software, and the clear overview of all connected systems that Alumio presents enables tweaks, improvements, and problem-solving projects more effectively, saving organizations time on maintenance and troubleshooting
4. Create a scalable IT ecosystem
Expand all software integrations with the right IT infrastructure and be prepared for growth.
As digitalization keeps evolving and newer software, systems, and technologies keep emerging, businesses need to be able to adapt these new solutions without having to rethink their entire IT architecture. In other words, it is imperative to have a scalable IT landscape that’s designed to adapt this new software and solutions. In this regard, modern businesses are opting for an approach known as Composable Commerce which enables the customization of IT landscapes by adding microservices.
If you want to learn more about businesses are benefitting from Composable Commerce, read our white paper: Composable Commerce: A Game Changer for Commerce Systems
How does Alumio enable the creation of a scalable IT landscape?
Alumio offers businesses the ability to create a future-proof IT infrastructure thanks to the flexibility to integrate as many software or cloud applications as required on one platform and interchange these software connections without losing data integrity. At the same time, it allows businesses to buffer huge surges of data loads on a dedicated cloud environment, which occur during periods of peak sales, preventing system crashes and ensuring business continuity.
In regards to scalability, the two key benefits the platform offers are:
To interchange software effortlessly without needing a long and expensive project to accommodate the new connections and adjust the existing ones via custom code.
To save time and resources on digital growth by being able to handle exponential data overload and meet any emerging data requirements.
We started with big commercials on YouTube in 2021. This resulted in a growth of our business with 700% on peak moments. We were so happy with Alumio iPaaS in our IT landscape because it was able to buffer our orders, and saved our continuity in order process.”
5. Ensure cost-optimization
Most digitalizing companies waste significant cost, effort, and time experimenting with tedious point-to-point software integrations without the proper IT infrastructure. Ultimately, it all boils down to Alumio being a cost-efficient solution.
As a scalable and future-proof integration solution, there are three key cost optimization benefits that the Alumio iPaaS delivers:
1. Reduced TCO (Total Cost of Operations):
Alumio simplifies integrations for developers and non-coding professionals, reducing operational costs regarding hiring, outsourcing, and third-party dependency.
The Monitoring and Logging features help keep track of every process, data transfer, request, and change across all integration. By instantly detecting any integration errors or API conflicts, users can swiftly troubleshoot and resolve them via an intuitive dashboard, saving significant time and labor costs.
Alumio eliminates black boxes and budget overruns by making all integrations and data flows visible on one user-friendly interface, which developers, project managers, and business owners can understand and collaborate upon.
2. Improved TTM (Time to Market):
Alumio enables businesses to freely experiment with removing or exchanging a new solution without losing data integrity.
Alumio's connector packages are an integration shortcut to help develop integrations significantly faster.
The platform enables the automation of complex sequences of workflows, such as simultaneously sending real-time product stock updates from the ERP system to the e-commerce platform and PIM system.
3. Increased ROI (Return on Investment):
Alumio enables businesses to freely experiment with removing or exchanging a new solution without losing data integrity.
Alumio's connector packages are an integration shortcut to help develop integrations significantly faster.
The platform enables the automation of complex sequences of workflows, such as simultaneously sending real-time product stock updates from the ERP system to the e-commerce platform and PIM system.
6. Be privacy compliant and secure
For any iPaaS, SaaS application, or cloud service, security is crucial, and data safety should be a top priority.
The more software businesses integrate into their IT landscape, the more their data risks being scattered, lost, or inaccessible. This threat of data loss isn’t just applicable to company-sensitive information but to customer data. If integrations are done via custom code or plugins that several partners maintain, the accountability for data security is extremely spread out and third-party dependent. This translates into saving on spending resources on constantly updating security features or spending on several integration solutions to keep data safe.
By centralizing all software integrations and data on one cloud-based dedicated platform, Alumio gives businesses full control over their data across all connections and simplifies the management of data security. Additionally, by constantly monitoring and logging all software connections, the platform provides 360-degree customer insights into data and immediately detects breaches. In this way, Alumio helps businesses ensure that customer data is never shown to unauthorized parties, remains safe between integrated systems, and that customers can access data anytime and anywhere they want.
As part of its security features, Alumio prevents IT from bringing businesses to a standstill by:
Handling massive orders
Dealing with IT eco-system crashes
Preparing fail-safes in case of hacked IT systems
Centralization, notification, and logging for better IT-security
Be GDPR compliant with Alumio
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A right to erasure and the right to be forgotten
The right to have data deleted from multiple connected software
The right to receive personal data on a user-friendly interface
The right to notice, access, change, and object to personal data being shared
The right to remove data from (external) sources
The right to choose what personal information can be collected
Read about how Alumio gives organizations the configuration capabilities to meet the regulations that apply to their business in the security and privacy compliance of the Alumio iPaaS.
7. Benefit from AI and ML
As a dedicated cloud-based integration platform, Alumio helps handle and organize vast loads of data across all connected software and applications, empowering organizations to benefit from AI and ML.
Companies who are using ML and AI to run their business are 35% more successful."
Among key emerging technologies, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence systems are only limited in their intelligence by the amount of data available for access. In other words, these systems require a significant amount of data to be effective, especially from different parts of a business’ customer journey (as shown in the image below). Therefore, to utilize ML and AI systems at their full potential to help automate business processes, businesses need to be able to connect these systems to a multitude of data sources (in different formats) across their IT landscape.
At the same time, AI and ML can also significantly simplify the self-service integration capabilities of Alumio, using predictive algorithms to help improve a business’ software integration capabilities. This can manifest in the form of enhanced, recommended data flow, and it can help remember, predict, and avoid the repetition of integration errors. In this regard, it isn’t far-fetched to suggest that adapting more AI and ML technology may be the next step in evolving the self-service integration features of an iPaaS.
Every day, more businesses are choosing to leverage the power of AI to compete with industry giants and keep up with consumer expectations and demand. Since cutting-edge technology holds a special place at Alumio and is in line with our future-oriented mindset, we built the Alumio OpenAI connector package for businesses to explore endless automation capabilities.
Read our blogs on the hot topic of OpenAI and discover how you can reap the benefits of AI and take your business to the next level:
Integrating the Future with OpenAI
Benefits of Connecting OpenAI to Your E-commerce Business
In conclusion…
Most modern businesses waste significant cost, effort, and time by experimenting with tedious point-to-point software integrations without the proper IT infrastructure. The solution to that problem? Alumio.
Alumio provides businesses with a flexible, scalable, and future-proof solution that can unleash their full digital potential and create a robust IT ecosystem that can overcome any integration challenge they may face!
Thanks to Alumio, businesses avoid the costs and hassles of creating siloed, custom-code software integrations and instead seamlessly connect to new software solutions and migrate old legacy systems. Integrating new systems, SaaS solutions, and cloud applications has never been this easy!
