A Lack of Integration is Proving Costly, Study Finds

Lacking integration technology is leading to lost orders, workflows halted by missing data, and inefficient processing.

A survey of IT decision-makers has found that poor and missing integration technology is costing businesses half a million dollars per year, on average.

The study from technology firm Cleo polled 100 IT decision-makers spanning a variety of sectors about the state of their integration and digital communication capabilities.

The respondents said that lacking integration technology is leading to lost orders, workflows halted by missing data, and inefficient processing. Asked to put a yearly price tag on the costs of the missing and poor integration, the IT decision makers landed on an average of $500,000 per company.

We’re not surprised.

Essent has estimated previously that improperly communicated purchase orders are costing the promotional products industry, conservatively, tens of millions of dollars per year. People across the industry, and other industries, are constantly trying to gather and decipher information that could have been communicated automatically and correctly in the first place with the right integration solutions.

Lack of Integration Isn't for Lack of Want

The struggle is that even for those who are able to get an integration up and running, the integration fails under just a bit of stress or it becomes too costly to secure and maintain.

In the study, 95 percent of respondents said they want to use integration to improve their business infrastructure. But less than half of them were confident that they could support and scale it to volume. Meanwhile, another 29 percent of IT decision makers said they lack the developers on staff to build and manage integrations.

These numbers don’t surprise us either. As an integration services provider, we’ve met many companies who have come to us after trying to take on integration on their own or going with a second-rate services provider. The struggle is that even for those who are able to get an integration up and running, the integration fails under just a bit of stress or it becomes too costly to secure and maintain.

The Essent OrderTrax Network was built with this dichotomy in mind. Companies can have the award-winning Essent integration implement integration initiatives with integration partners and then let Essent handle the security, support, and maintenance.

Findings Are a Reminder More Than a Suprise

The study is not surprising in its findings but offers another significant reminder to use technology solutions that are designed for integration.

In terms of internal integration, such as between CRM, Order Management, and Accounting systems, 81 percent of the IT decision-makers said they believe replacing legacy systems would support business growth while 22 percent said legacy technologies are causing significant delays.

Our back-office business management system, EssentOne, integrates the length of the transaction lifecycle so that data only needs to be entered once and exists in one central repository. Each part of the transaction informs and populates later parts, to the extent that Accounting is performed automatically as a consequence of processing the orders. The integration extends to ecommerce platforms as well, so that orders configured and placed on the website flow into the back-office as complete, accurate orders ready for immediate processing.

We’ve recognized for a long time the halted workflows, inefficient processes, and missing data caused by dis-integration -- and the real costs that come with it. We designed systems to combat exactly that.

So the new study that puts a figure to those costs is not surprising in its findings but offers another significant reminder to use technology solutions that are designed for integration.