The world is constantly changing. Yes, that’s nothing new. But this time, it’s happening at a speed and magnitude that businesses cannot ignore. The already pressing need for organizations to transform their operations to stay competitive exploded into an “or else” during the pandemic. Companies suddenly had to provide digital access to anywhere, anytime services.
Now, a new change catalyst has emerged like a lightning bolt. Rapid developments in generative AI are turning how businesses operate upside down yet again.
Gartner expects that by 2025, “70 percent of organizations will have operationalized AI architectures due to the rapid maturity of AI orchestration initiatives”. Accenture’s Technology Vision 2023 survey found that 95 percent of global executives agree new data architectures and strategies are required to manage the dramatic changes to their organizations’ data landscapes.
McKinsey, meanwhile, believes that by 2025, smart workflows and seamless interactions among humans and machines will likely be as standard as the corporate balance sheet and most employees will use data to optimize nearly every aspect of their work.
The common thread in all of these forecasts is data. And the bedrock foundation of how every business organizes, understands and uses data is ERP. An ERP system manages a broad range of operational processes – including finance, HR, manufacturing, supply chain and customer service – that ultimately create great customer experiences and build brand loyalty.
But when an ERP is slow, cumbersome and inefficient, the business will suffer in the market. That’s why modernizing outdated ERPs has become a high priority for technology and line of business leaders.
What do businesses want out of an ERP?
A cloud-native system can provide the agility and flexibility an on-premises ERP lacks, so firms can innovate, pivot and adapt faster to changing market conditions. But companies often don’t have a choice either way. ERP heavyweights SAP and Oracle have target dates for sunsetting their on-premises suites in the coming years – which will force organizations to switch to their respective cloud offerings of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and Oracle ERP Cloud.
From Gartner research, businesses need an ERP that supports what it calls “the composable enterprise.” Here, businesses can easily add and remove best-of-breed applications in a plug-and-play style to provide functionality that doesn’t exist in the primary system.
Those wanting an adaptable ERP will look for a technology ecosystem anchored by the ERP that synchronizes data within applications, simplifies B2B/EDI processes with trading partners, provides real-time event streaming management, supports API-enabled new services and promotes workflow automation.
The uncomfortable truth is that most ERP modernization efforts – the heart of digital transformation – get stuck in an IT chokepoint. A lack of data and application integration is a leading cause of why they either fail or produce underwhelming results for the business.
Nobody just wakes up one day and decides it would be nice to upgrade their ERP system. It’s a monumental, time-consuming and expensive endeavor. Do it wrong, and the tremors will reverberate throughout the entire organization.
But when done correctly, heroes are forged.
Circumventing modernization chokepoints
Let’s return to that “uncomfortable truth.” Here’s why most digital transformation initiatives become stuck in modernization chokepoints: a lack of application synchronization, no connectivity between on-premises and cloud systems, no real-time event stream management, little or no workflow automation and difficult to APL-enable new services.
As a result, projects like upgrading ERPs are anything but transformational. Instead, they become time- and money-wasting boondoggles. But Boomi changes the game. The Boomi platform ensures digital transformation success by eliminating the complexity and limitations of legacy systems and integrating fragmented architectures.
It helps organizations reinvent their businesses by connecting everyone to everything, anywhere. With Boomi as the essential connectivity piece for foundational projects like upgrading ERPs, companies can modernize and automate critical processes, take advantage of composable architectures and achieve business outcomes faster.
