Automated Integration: The Fuel for Your Digital Transformation

Automated integration is the ability to connect together the systems and applications throughout your organization through the use of technology like robotic process automation (RPA). Whether your applications are legacy, in the cloud, or on-premise, automated integration delivers a centralized spot to execute enterprise workflows and transform organizations to be more efficient, resilient, and competitive.  

The goal of any digital transformation is to make your processes run more smoothly. You want to eliminate and streamline complicated processes—not add to the mess. Plus, the number of applications at organizations grows every year, and automated integration helps ease that burden. The more systems and applications you can integrate with your automation software, the more end-to-end, enterprise-wide processes you can streamline, like mortgage processing, claims processing, and more. 

RPA tools simplify integration by offering various methods for communicating with applications and systems. An RPA solution with native actions to popular applications—like Microsoft, SQL, and more—provide a more user-friendly way to build automated integrations. These are more GUI-based and can feature drag-and-drop building blocks for your workflows. 

For more powerful connections, an RPA solution with an API integration kit can connect directly with your applications through third-party software application programming interfaces (APIs). While these generally require a little bit of coding, some RPA solutions have the capability to mask the complexities of working with APIs, to bring automated integration to more non-technical users. 

Here are three of the biggest benefits to automation integration: 

Benefit 1: Maximize the Value of Existing Applications 

Your systems and applications are powerful on their own. But when they’re stuck in silos, you’re not seeing the full value they can offer your organization. Automated integration lets your legacy systems, home-grown applications, and others in your IT environment communicate directly with each other. This makes your data more usable across your organization and cuts down on human errors like manually rekeying  information from one  application into another. 

Benefit 2: Get More Control Over Complex Environments 

Modern IT environments have grown more and more complex and feature systems on all types of platforms. Whether your applications are on Windows, Linux, UNIX, IBM i, in the cloud, or elsewhere, automated integration can bring your  efforts cross-platform. With an automation tool that centralizes your efforts, you get more control and visibility over your entire IT environment—no matter where your processes are running.  

Benefit 3: Easily Scale Your Automation Efforts 

Automated integration allows growing organizations to easily scale their efforts across the enterprise as needed. Whether you start your automation journey by streamlining one process, you can easily expand to an entire department, across departments, and beyond. Simply put, by integrating your systems through automation, you get scalability that spans people, teams, and processes to grow as your needs change. 

Wondering where to start with automated integration? Here are the top six places you can use automation to bring disparate applications together to achieve more efficient processes. 

1. Microsoft Automation 
   Microsoft applications are some of the most used in the workplace. Automation can handle your most time consuming and repetitive Microsoft tasks to integrate and automate Excel file processing, generate and distribute Word documents, access documents and data via SharePoint, and more.  

2. PowerShell Automation 
   Take your PowerShell efforts cross-platform to enhance what they’re already built to do. With automated integration, embed existing PowerShell scripts into your automated workflows or use a PowerShell script to trigger another process. 

3. Cloud Application Automation  
   As more resources move to the cloud, ensure accessibility with your existing on-premises applications to create a successful hybrid strategy. Whether you use Amazon Web Services (AWS) or other cloud services, automated integration allows you to harness the power of cloud computing while centralizing your systems and applications.  

4. Database Automation 
   Database automation empowers you to automate critical database tasks, ensuring data integrity and streamlining operations. From executing scheduled backups and running complex SQL queries, to real-time data synchronization across multiple databases, automate your way to a more efficient and error-free data environment. This automated integration facilitates seamless data flow between applications, enhancing reporting, analytics, and decision-making processes across your organization. 

5. File Transfer Automation 
   If you’re frequently moving hundreds or thousands of files daily, automated integration centralizes your efforts to take out the complications. Consolidate your applications to prevent sprawl and add more functions for using your data than a designated ETL or EDI tool to save time by managing data internally at the database or application level. 

6. Terminal Emulation Automation 
   Integrate terminal emulation into your automated enterprise workflows to take your efforts beyond the green screen. Gain the ability to monitor tasks on legacy systems from the same centralized location as your other automated workflows.