For a long time, we’ve been looking at trends that impact the future of work – and, more importantly, the future of the systems integration industry. This puts topics like artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, and big data at the forefront.
Many integration companies are unsure as to how to address these emerging trends – at least in a practical matter as something that could be incorporated into their offerings.
While the AI trend is going to take a little longer for VARs and integrators to wrap their heads around, mobility and big data should already be moving into your value proposition.
In this blog, we’ll address the internal and external roles that data and analytics play for integrators and VARs today, as well as a few ways they’ll impact the future of systems integration businesses.
Internal Roles
CRMs have long been one of the largest investments (with the least successful returns) for small companies like integration firms. We sometimes hear that these systems require too much work to input the information, and it becomes a battle with the sales team to get them to use it. At the core, this is often a management-level issue. In these cases, the work is very manual and the sales team feels like it’s a “Big Brother” system used for managing the pipeline.
As data proliferates, however, CRM systems can much more proactively participate in the sales cycle, providing proactive reminders (that don’t require scheduling) and giving predictive insights on which customers are most likely to buy. This can take an often-disliked tool like a CRM system and turn it into a sales professional’s best friend. This is just one of many ways that data and analytics have become invaluable.
Other areas, like order entry, purchasing, AR, and AP, can all be greatly enhanced with better use of data and analytics. Now, more than ever, the tools know where to look – it’s no longer up to the user to figure it out on his or her own.
External Roles
Integrated systems have long provided certain data related to system use, but you hear very little about integrators collecting, analyzing, and sharing data with customers. Sure, they may provide some type of remote access so customers can see the data, but what type of ongoing reporting is offered? In many cases, the answer is “none.” But this is an opportunity.
Say, for instance, that a company invests in cloud-based collaboration. They spend a certain amount upfront and an additional monthly fee for licensing. At the end of the month, seeing a report on usage and quality metrics would supply that customer with a level of assuredness in knowing that their investment was sound. If the data shows lower-than-expected usage, this could provide a client training opportunity for integrators while simultaneously showing the customer that you’re paying attention. The best part: Most of this data is readily available. Reporting is a great way to become invaluable to your client.
In the future, data and analytics will expand into the utilization of machine learning and AI. Right now, integrators have the opportunity to collect data and utilize it to provide customers with valuable insights. In the future, even the simplest cloud-based solutions will be able to interpret data and provide customers with insights about behavior and usage, as well as make useful predictions and recommendations on how to better utilize a tool or expand investments in certain technologies to improve performance.
Integrators can no longer afford to simply integrate and maintain systems. It’s too archaic of an approach. Customers are spending lots of money, and they’re depending on integrated systems to produce greater levels of productivity, improved knowledge transfer, and more seamless communication. In the search for service opportunities, providing companies with a proactive subset of insights extracted from system data shows a competency that most in this industry lack – and a desire for customers to realize the most value possible from their technology investments. —Dan Newman, Cofounder of V3*Broadsuite