SaaS sprawl is a challenge for every enterprise. The more applications and systems in the workforce, the wider the communication gap between teams.
The only solution is to explore viable enterprise applications integration tools to create an interconnected web of work management systems and CRMs (customer relationships management).
Done right, enterprise integration applications can make collaborations silky smooth. Done wrong, it could create more issues for the involved teams and enterprises.
To help you ace the integration of enterprise applications, I’ll cover everything worth knowing about this topic. You’ll find out the benefits, challenges, use cases, and best practices to follow.
Here are the topics covered in this article:
- What is Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI)?
- How Does Enterprise Applications Integration Work?
- Why is Enterprise Application Integration Important?
- What are the Use Cases of Enterprise Application Integration?
- What are the Key Considerations in Enterprise Application Integration?
- The Best Enterprise Integration Applications
- What are some Challenges of Implementing Enterprise Application Integration?
- What are the Best Practices of Enterprise Integration?
- Exalate: Your Reliable Enterprise Application Integration Solution
What is Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)?
Enterprise application integration is the process of using a custom script, API middleware, or a third-party tool to connect multiple systems used within or across organizations to create an interconnected ecosystem.
Companies depend on EAI for smooth cooperation between teams and cross-company collaborations with MSPs, suppliers, and clients.
The integration solution, by bridging the compatibility and communication gap between systems, also helps exchange data and provide real-time updates.
What are the Goals of Enterprise Applications Integration?
The specific goal of using enterprise data integration applications varies by company and objectives. Some of them include:
- Data integration between systems to unify formats and avoid duplication. This, for instance, can include syncing sales data between Salesforce and Jira. Data formats in these systems can be “
dd/mm/yyyy” or “mm/dd/yyyy”. So, unifying them makes sure the data stays and means the same on both sides. - Workflow integration between teams or organizations to increase productivity and efficiency of collaborations. IT teams can improve service management by syncing data from the support team’s ServiceNow instance.
- Interface integration between both sides of the integration in order to provide a unified view, with either of them having to leave their respective environments.
How Does Enterprise Application Integration Work?
Let’s use a sample connection scenario between Salesforce and ServiceNow to explore how enterprise application integration works.
On one end, you have a Salesforce org. On the other end, you have a ServiceNow instance. But since both platforms cannot interact natively, you’d need an integration solution to mediate between them.
So here is a breakdown of what happens:
- The Sales team (using Salesforce) creates a Case for a customer.
- The third-party integration solution analyzes the newly created entity to determine if it meets the conditions for synchronization. It then interacts with the Salesforce API to fetch the response.
- The solution converts the record from Salesforce to a ServiceNow-readable format.
- A ServiceNow Incident, Change Request, or Problem is created to replicate the Salesforce Case based on the custom mappings.
- The support agents can now escalate the new Incident to the development team via Jira Service Management while making sure the Sales team gets timely updates with the designated fields in the Salesforce Case.
What are the Types of Enterprise Applications Integration?
The working mechanism differs for several EAI solutions. Here they are:
- Point-to-point integration: Also called peer-to-peer integration, this involves connecting the endpoints of two separate software applications or systems directly to exchange data and communicate without intermediaries.
- Hub-and-spoke integration: This involves a central hub and different spokes. The central hub connects with multiple systems simultaneously to process the data upon request. Hub-and-spoke integrations are usually unidirectional. So, if the MSP has a system integrated with clients, the flow of updates goes only from the MSP to the client and not the other way around.
- Microservices integration: This involves breaking down the entire system architecture into small, lightweight applications. It allows you to integrate only the needed services instead of the entire system. For example, you can integrate only the ticketing system in Zendesk with Jira instead of the entire solution.
- Enterprise service bus (ESB) integration: This is a variation of the hub-and-spoke approach that allows applications to interact with each other and perform message transformation, protocol transformation, routing, and authentication.
Why is Enterprise Application Integration Important?
Organizations explore integrating their enterprise applications for various generic and specific reasons.
Overall, more than 83% of organizations have implemented it.
Let’s discuss the benefits in detail.
Eliminate Data Silos
One drawback of having SaaS applications isolated within an organization is that data gets siloed. But by integrating these systems, your company can break down these siloes and get all the teams to access data freely according to their permissions.
Improves Process Efficiency
If a process involves multiple enterprise applications—say the sales enablement team uses both Salesforce and Jira—integrating them would make the sales process more efficient.
So your team would have access to all the sales and customer data in order to streamline the process and avoid duplication of efforts.
Construction company Nevaris Build used an EAI tool to improve workflow efficiency between their QA experts and devs. The result was decreased issue-handling times.
Reduces Expenses
Instead of paying to onboard new applications, teams can continue using their existing enterprise application.
For instance, when you integrate ServiceNow and Zendesk, either side won’t have to pay the extra licensing and infrastructure fees to get the data they need.
Piotr Radtke confirmed the cost savings as the Senior Project manager at Netguru.
The company significantly reduced license costs and connected DevOps with its ITSM and business teams.
Improve the Overall Experience
When all the teams have a clear view of customer data, they’ll be able to provide a consistent experience on all channels. The admins will also have access to information in real time to get updates.
Daniel Miks, the Atlassian Solutions Expert at WirelessCar, explained how Exalate helped them improve the user experience.
WirelessCar was able to improve the experience of the brands working with them. They synced their internal Jira with their customers’ ServiceNow instances for efficient ticket handling.
Automate Syncs
Tools for integrating enterprise applications come with cutting-edge technologies, such as AI-powered scripting assistants. These tools can optimize and automate syncs and workflows between systems and teams.
You can consult the AI assistant with your prompt or query to generate a script that will help you map the statuses between the two systems.
What are the Use Cases of Enterprise Application Integration?
The general application of EAI is to connect multiple systems to share data. But to understand what this entails, let’s go through some common use cases for enterprise applications integration:
Supply Chain Management
Integrating ERPs and digital inventories allows organizations to manage supply chains, coordinate supply and delivery, and track product inventory.
Sales Coordination
As mentioned earlier, connecting CRMs and sales software can help the sales team learn more about customers and deals.
Integrating the SLA details from Jira with the user information field in Salesforce will provide more insights about the deal value and the customer priority.
IT Service Management
The IT team can manage services with ServiceNow by logging incidents, problems, requests, and other concerns.
For internal syncs, the team using Jira Service Management can get updates from the ServiceNow instance to learn the status of their concern.
For external syncs, the MSP using ServiceNow will send timely progress updates to customers in their system (Zendesk or Jira Service Management, for example) in real time without going back and forth.
Marketing Automation
Marketing managers can set up the sync to be triggered whenever a high-priority ticket comes into Zendesk from Jira. They can also map the statuses, so when the ticket is set to Open, the Jira issue is set as To Do. When the ticket is Resolved, the issue is marked as Done.
Legacy System Integration
The right integration solution can let you synchronize legacy systems with modern enterprise applications.
Sometimes, this would require modernizing the legacy system first. But other times, the application solution can address the disparity in architecture to create a functional synchronization.
What are the Key Considerations in Enterprise Application Integration?
Here are things to bear in mind when choosing an EAI platform.
Platform Security
You need a robust security framework to ensure that the data stages of the synchronization are secure, whether in transit or at rest.
Some integration security measures to implement include multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls, firewalls, endpoint detection, and much more.
In general, stay up to date with compliance regulations to maintain top-notch privacy and security.
Usability and Flexibility
The solution should be accessible to every team member regardless of technical expertise. This means that they can set up and configure syncs independently without external help.
This can get tricky when scripting is involved.
However, with features like AI Assist, users can generate context-relevant scripts in minutes by relying on user prompts.
Scalability
The EAI solution should be able to scale with your infrastructure as the number of users, platforms, and operations increase. Once the solution can distribute the load across the system, the performance will stay consistent and flexible to demand.
Cost
Whether you decide to build or buy the integration solution, the cost should be within your budget and needs. Look for solutions that offer features you actually need to achieve your integration goals.
Team Expertise
Only go for enterprise application integration, which your available team can configure and set up. This will reduce the overhead cost of hiring engineers and training staff to use it.
The Best Enterprise Integration Applications
Here are some of the best applications for enterprise integration.
Exalate
Exalate is a bidirectional integration solution that supports two-way syncs between work management systems and CRMs such as Jira, Salesforce, Azure DevOps, Zendesk, and ServiceNow.
Exalate comes in two configuration modes: the Basic mode and the Script mode.
With the Basic mode, you get pre-built sync mappings that cannot be configured. For instance, you can create a Jira issue from a Salesforce case and only sync the basic fields. This mode is available for free.
The Script mode allows you to set up simple to advanced use cases, such as connecting multiple Zendesk tickets to a single Jira issue.
It comes with a Groovy scripting engine and an embedded AI chatbot. This AI-enabled integration feature is helpful if you want to generate scripts based on the prompts you provide.
You can also set up triggers for automating synchronization events, which you can manage in the Sync Queue where all active and pending connections can be viewed.
SnapLogic
SnapLogic is an iPaaS that supports the connection of enterprise cloud services, SaaS applications, and legacy systems.
It comes with API management solutions and SnapLogic Autosync for automated data ingestion. You can also integrate applications with pre-built connectors or “Snaps”.
SnapAI includes several modules that use artificial intelligence, such as AutoSuggest, GenAI Builder, SnapGPT, and AutoPrep.
Jitterbit Harmony
Harmony is an EAI platform that allows you to build applications and establish automated connections between systems and interfaces.
The Harmony API manager speeds up API creation. Harmony EDI also helps users manage electronic data interchange between organizations through a repository of pre-built connectors.
Zapier
Zapier is a no-code enterprise application integration platform used to connect over 7000 applications.
The main selling point of Zapier is that it allows the integration of systems without writing any code. You can use custom workflow automation called Zaps to connect multiple systems.
Zapier also supports custom workflow visualization pages called Interfaces and AI chatbots for smooth customer conversations.
Workato
Workato is an enterprise integration solution that allows businesses to automate workflows and connect all cloud and on-premise apps.
When using Workato, you can connect the Enterprise iPaaS feature to integrate business data and processes. You can manage API and orchestrate data exchange between platforms.
Workato Workbots can also improve response time, while Recipes allow you to create automated triggers and actions for complex workflows.
What are some Challenges of Implementing Enterprise Application Integration?
The first challenge associated with implementing EAI platforms is complexity. Since the underlying technologies are complex and different, you need to account for these variations when choosing or building an integration solution.
Another challenge is legacy applications. If you don’t have a dedicated engineering team to understand the legacy system’s infrastructure, the sync might end up leading to data loss and inaccuracies.
Security is also a major challenge when implementing EAI systems. Since sensitive business and customer data is being exchanged across systems, they are vulnerable to external threats.
Whether for external or internal practices, both sides must employ robust security and data encryption measures to guarantee safety and privacy.
What are the Best Practices of Enterprise Integration?
If you want the enterprise integration to work smoothly, here are some best practices to follow:
- Carry out an extensive evaluation to discover the best approach for integrating the involved systems. Involve stakeholders on both sides of the connection to make sure they share their concerns and ideas.
- Run tests before implementing any integration on a broader scale. This will help you fix minor issues before they snowball into company-wide disasters. If you map the wrong fields or values, data could get lost.
- Document every process and action pertaining to the EAI implementation to guarantee smooth continuity.
- Conduct extensive training exercises to ensure your team members understand the necessary security measures and configuration rules required to achieve the best results.
- Analyze usage and performance data to determine if the integration is performing as expected. This will also show you areas of improvement and suggestions for optimization.
Exalate: Your Reliable Enterprise Application Integration Solution
Enterprises, suppliers, outsourcing companies, MSPs, and e-commerce entities rely on Exalate to connect their applications.
Exalate uses AI to make scripting easier and more accurate:
- Aida is a standalone AI documentation assistant that you can use to fetch vital information from the Exalate documentation.
- AI Assist is a dedicated AI script builder intrinsically embedded in the configuration console.
Both systems accept user prompts and process them in order to generate code snippets for scripting connections and mappings, but the expected output from each can be different.
If you have specific enterprise applications you want to integrate using Exalate, contact our solutions engineers for a free demo.
