Optimize the value chain with an integration platform

What is the Value Chain and how can it help modern businesses?

Evolving from physical automations to digitally powered automations

If there is an effective, step-by-step model that categorizes all the various business processes that go into creating and delivering value with a product or service, it is the “Value Chain”. Proposed by Michael Porter in his 1985 book, “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance”, the framework essentially consists of five primary activities and four support activities, namely:

Primary activities - inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and customer service. Essentially, everything that ensures a product or service is delivered successfully.

Support activities - procurement, technology development, human resource management, and infrastructure. In other words, everything that ensures all the primary activities are able to function effectively.

By encompassing all these areas for business development, the Value Chain helps organizations optimize their overall efficiency and maximize value while minimizing cost. Most importantly, it gives businesses a clear overview of all the areas they need to employ, improve, supply, and enhance with technology and automations.

Each of the divisions on the Value Chain were until recently powered by human resources, manual processes, and physical automations. However, the advent of digital technology and cloud solutions have led to modern businesses taking a “Digital First” approach in improving their Value Chain, with the help of software-based automations.

For instance, now entire product lifecycles in retail are governed across online omnichannel e-commerce experiences. B2B transactions and supply chain in manufacturing are streamlined and enabled digitally. Even customer relationship and marketing efforts are seeing an ever-increasing implementation of digital transformation.

Digitally transforming the Value Chain with integrations

Harnessing SaaS, cloud apps, and data sources with system integrations
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"Executives say digital transformation benefits include improving operational efficiency (40%), faster time to market (36%), and meeting customer expectations (35%)." - PTC Digital Tranformation Survey

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As the name indicates, digital transformation involves integrating digital technology with all the business processes of a company, from Operations, Logistics, Marketing, Sales, Customer service, Procurement, HR, and all other departments. The reason this helps develop the Value Chain so well is because now there is a software solution or cloud app to digitalize and automate processes of nearly every businesses division. For instance, businesses can implement:

• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or Exact Globe help track and manage inbound and outbound logistics, as well as human resource management.
• E-commerce platforms like Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento), Big Commerce, and Shopify enable businesses to build web shops to digitally sell and market their products.
• PIM (Product Information Management) systems like Akeneo and Pimcore help centralize, store, enrich, and update product information.
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems like Salesforce and Hubspot help track customer data, improve customer support, and automate marketing initiatives at every business touch-point.
• EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) helps with the paperless exchange of B2B information for procurement or sales in a standard electronic format, ensuring data accuracy and faster transactions.
• Channel Marketing Software like ChannelEngine and Channable help simplify the process of managing and optimizing e-commerce product listings across multiple channels like Amazon, Alibaba, and Bol.

There’s also WMS (Warehouse Management System), AI solutions like OpenAI being leveraged for e-commerce, BI (Business Intelligence), and many more systems that businesses can connect with to improve each area of their Value Chain.

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Connecting with these applications helps optimize a plethora of costly, time-consuming and manual repetitive work processes on the value chain. This includes digitally automating product optimization, order management, shipping, inventory updates, returns, procurement, emailing, and much more. And, it also includes digitalizing recruitment, emailing, invoicing, customer support, and a thousand odd more processes for nearly every business department on the Value Chain.

However, contrary to how easy it seems to implement these SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud apps to expedite digital transformation on the value chain, the real challenge lies in getting these disparate solutions to work together and share data seamlessly. Thus, although a seemingly small part of it, at the heart of digitally transforming the Value Chain lies “integrations,” i.e. integrating these various business systems, software solutions (SaaS), applications, and data sources.

That’s where the Alumio iPaaS comes in!

Integrating and optimizing the Value Chain with the Alumio iPaaS

Building fast, flexible, and future-proof system integrations

Traditionally, system integrations are created with custom code. However, this method is time-consuming, expensive, and it’s only good for creating single point-to-point connections between two software solutions, such as an ERP to e-commerce integration. The moment you start attempting to connect more software or applications across the Value Chain with custom code, the harder it gets to share and sync data accurately. Additionally, such integrations can only be managed and modified with senior developers or coding experts, and replacing connected systems can cause data integrity issues.
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According to a report by Gartner, "By 2023, over 50% of large and midsize organizations globally will have deployed at least one iPaaS offering, up from approximately 35% in 2020."

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The Alumio iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) is a next-gen connectivity solution. It enables businesses to quickly and cost-effectively integrate two or multiple systems, software, apps, or data sources, across on-premises and cloud environments.

As a cloud-native, low-code platform it provides a user friendly interface that developers and business users (project managers, data experts, C-Level) can collaborate on to create, manage, and monitor these integrations. Most importantly, it provides organizations with one central cloud environment to seamlessly share data between connected software solutions, throughout the Value Chain. This makes it easy for businesses to automate workflows between departments and organize a scalable IT ecosystem from one intuitive dashboard, in a fast, flexible, and future-proof way.

Here’s some of the many key advantages the Alumio iPaaS offers to automate the Value Chain of a business:

• Move to the cloud: integrate on-premises systems on cloud environments, connect modern cloud-based software via industry standard APIs, and migrate data from old systems to new ones.
  

• Get faster time to Market: rapidly integrate new software or cloud app within weeks, build swift proof of concepts and deploy products or services significantly faster.
  
• Increase operational efficiency: reduce manual processes and data entry work by automating workflows and streamlining business process through the entire Value Chain.
  
• Lower operational costs: work with junior developers, free up senior developers to develop advanced solutions, and save on troubleshooting with automated monitoring and logging.
  
• Improve data management: implement Alumio platform features to flexibly map, sync, modify, and validate data across multiple systems, improving data quality and eliminating costly errors.
  
• Be secure and compliant: centralize all your integrations and data on one secure, dedicated cloud space with regular security updates, and comply with privacy legislations like GDPR.
  
• Get 360-degree customer insight: centralizing all connected systems and data on one platform, the Alumio iPaaS can providing valuable customer insights from every touchpoint of your business.
  

To summarize, the Alumio iPaaS helps optimize the Value Chain to increase your margins, enhance customer experience, and reduce operational costs with improved digital connectivity. It does so by providing right cloud-based platform to seamlessly integrate multiple software solutions and cloud apps that digitalize business processes, boost productivity, and increase market access. It also enables seamless data sharing and the automation of workflows between connected systems, streamlining business processes and reducing manual labor and data entry.

In other words, it can be said that while the Value Chain provides the blueprint for all the areas that a business can generate value in, the Alumio integration platform works as a central hub that can connect, develop, and optimize each area on the Value Chain with fast, flexible, and future-proof integrations.