One of the most enduring, difficult, and often costly endeavors in life is to bridge the gap between old and new – or, perhaps more delicately put, between legacy and emerging. This is as true to the business world as it is to our personal lives. Indeed, there are generational gaps between different classes of people, processes, strategies, and technologies; closing them is both a challenge for business leaders and an opportunity for innovative technology solution providers.
With this in mind, I recently took a briefing from Cleo, a Chicago-based systems integration software and cloud services platform that serves the manufacturing and supply chain management industries. Cleo primarily focuses on the North America market and, through its London office, services the EMEA and Asia-Pacific markets, counting six of the Fortune 10 companies as customers. On the briefing call was David Brunswick, vice president of solutions, North America at Cleo, who describes Cleo as an “ecosystem integration company” whose mission is to empower their clients to integrate newer systems with their existing technology infrastructure.
According to Dave, Cleo provides on-premises as well as cloud-based integration platforms to B2B clients; these platforms serve as the “glue” between legacy technology infrastructure and modern or emerging applications. Furthermore, Cleo automates the flow of supply chain data through employing a combination of electronic data interchange (or EDI), and more commonly, application programming interface (API) – two common means to integrate systems. They may use EDI to transmit information between buying organizations and suppliers, and then employ APIs to tap into legacy ERP, eCommerce, and CRM systems. The result, ideally, is the creation of an “ecosystem of systems” between trading partners.
It was clear during our call that organizations of all sizes need to consider a number of variables prior to either adopting standalone systems, like spend analysis or supplier management platforms, or embarking on a long-term digital transformation project. Before diving headlong into either, here are three key considerations:
One. Many organizations understand and accept the need to change, but get in their own way. In order to survive in the world today, organizations need very agile supply chains: weather events, political conditions, tariff/trade-war adjustments, climate change and other factors are reshaping the global business world, and companies must be able to stay ahead or at least keep up. Procurement and supply chain organizations that are not digitally enabled and integrated will not be nearly as responsive to fast-changing events as fully- or even partially-digitized, automated, and integrated organizations.
“Most companies know that the world is changing and they have to change with it,” Dave said, “but there are a significant number of organizations that don’t know how to get there.” Aging IT infrastructure, legacy systems, prior integrations to back-end systems, and a general lack of interest in commencing expensive, large-scale IT purchases are all potential impediments to digital transformation. Many organizations dream, but fewer are ultimately successful.
Two. Software integration may be easier, or more attainable than one might think. With integration software and platforms, organizations may be able to integrate modern or emerging business applications on top of legacy systems and infrastructure, rather than replace it outright and start from scratch. Modern EDI and APIs can help bridge gaps between legacy systems (like ERP) and modern business solutions (like spend analysis and eSourcing). This could help procurement teams tap into enterprise spend data, gain visibility into buying behaviors and trends, and enable these organizations to more quickly shift sourcing from one market to the next to take advantage of more competitive pricing and reliable suppliers.
Three. Starting from scratch is often easier than “selling” wholesale digital transformation. According to Dave, it may actually be easier for start-ups more recently-established companies to adopt modern or emerging business technologies that are “turn key” and easily integrate with each other. With a virtual blank slate, start-ups and newer companies have nothing to build on and everything in front of them – they can envision the kind of IT infrastructure they’d like, especially if it remains entirely cloud-based and delivered “as a service.”
In such cases, it is much easier to turn the key on new systems and integrations than to have to continuously work to “sell” vision and ideas to personnel that have been doing their job a certain way for quite some time. Integrating modern or emerging technologies with existing systems requires a degree of change management, along with the vision, expertise, and continual support to ensure that change is lasting and effective. That effort may take several months (or more – we have certainly heard of transformation/integration projects lasting a year to eighteen months).
Final Thoughts
Systems integrations and “go-lives” can be difficult, costly, and seemingly never ending. But they need not be. Software integration solutions providers, like Cleo, exist to make these projects more cost effective, and modern/emerging business solutions more attainable. With the help of integration platforms, EDI, and API, more procurement and supply chain management organizations can increase their agility and identify, create, or realize more value.
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