While Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) continues to grow in popularity, many businesses and organizations still have questions about what the tool is and how it can impact business. With iPaaS, you can revolutionize how your business operates and enable seamless communication between different applications and data sources, as well as automate tasks to reduce the burden on IT teams.
Understanding iPaaS
iPaaS is a cloud-based platform that facilitates the integration of different software applications and data sources, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud. It’s like a grand central station, efficiently coordinating various components of your business to work together, ensuring a smoother and more productive workflow.
With iPaaS you can integrate systems and build automated workflows to handle a variety of tasks including password resets, name changes, ticket/data clean up and even more complex things like onboarding and offboarding employees.
iPaaS allows for more efficient and better-governed enterprise integration and automation (versus homegrown scripts or APIs, for example) by centralizing all integrations into one hub with a library of connectors to common systems such as Workday, Oracle, your ITSM platform, Salesforce, Active Directory, Azure, and hundreds more, as well as any APIs.
With all these systems connected and data points secured in one spot, end-users can leverage the platform to move data, transform data and build out automations and workflows using a visual drag-and-drop flow builder that can be triggered from a field change, form fill or any number of actions.
Why Invest in iPaaS?
Investing in iPaaS can bring a host of benefits to your business:
- Increased Productivity: By automating manual processes, your team can focus on strategic tasks, boosting overall productivity.
- Improved Efficiency: iPaaS ensures all your systems are in sync, reducing errors and improving data accuracy.
- Cost Reduction: By streamlining operations, iPaaS can significantly reduce operational costs.
A recent market study conducted by TeamDynamix and IDG found that 89% of companies surveyed said they struggle with data integration backlogs, even if using a third party to help. In addition, 74% say they simply don’t have enough resources to handle the integration workload.
Usually, integration debt builds over time as more and more applications, systems and databases are brought into the enterprise system landscape. However, the pace of new tech adoption is on the rise, and IT leaders simply can’t keep up with demand.
Compounding these issues, many organizations are still using point-to-point integrations, APIs, PowerShell scripts and ETL utilities to move data and create automation. This is an enormous drain on IT as each requires deep technical expertise. In the end, lines of business are starting to look for a new way forward that offers faster connectivity with less reliance on highly technical issues.
Modern integration and automation platforms help address the problems of growing integration debt by making it quick and easy to connect any systems you bring on board with the rest of the organization. This means that IT teams can satisfy the demand without the need for coding, development, scriptwriting and building out point-to-point integrations.
iPaaS is built for the kind of quick deployment teams need to avoid creating and accumulating new integration debt because it’s so easy to make new connections leveraging a library of pre-built connectors. Once connected, automation can easily be created using a codeless drag-and-drop interface.
Smaller teams can connect new applications without needing a long development cycle and a team of developers.
The Power of iPaaS in Action
At Pima County, one of the goals of bringing on TeamDynamix for IT Service Management (ITSM) and iPaaS (integration platform as a service) is to reduce the toil caused by these types of tasks.
“People feel so much more empowered and have so much more worth when they are doing things that are intellectually rigorous and challenging versus when they are just repeating the same mechanical actions over and over and over with very little thought,” Mark Hayes, information technology leader at Pima County, said.
With TeamDynamix now in place, Pima County is looking to automate and integrate as much of the manual ITSM processes into workflows as they can both in IT and throughout the rest of the organization.
“The drudgery of working through mundane, repetitive tasks doesn’t exist just in IT,” Hayes said. “I think the more we can reduce toil within the departments that we support, the more people are going to buy in and understand the value of what we’re trying to achieve. There’s nothing like success to breed more success, and once other departments see the benefits they’re going to want these tools too.”
iPaaS is a powerful tool for organizations looking to integrate systems and automate processes, offering improved security, time and resource savings and better service for end-users. By adopting an iPaaS solution, businesses can streamline their operations, enhance productivity and stay ahead in the competitive IT landscape.
One of the key advantages of iPaaS is its no-code nature, which empowers technical employees across the organization to set up their own integrations and automations. This democratization of technology reduces the dependency on IT teams, who often face a backlog of requests from various departments.
By enabling non-IT employees to create and manage their own integrations and automations, iPaaS frees up IT staff to focus on higher-level tasks, such as strategic planning and cybersecurity. This not only improves overall efficiency but also fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration within the organization.
“With iPaaS, we’re looking at automating tasks to take some of the things we do manually out of the hands of IT staff, so they can be more efficient,” Barry Bowden, IT Service Desk manager at NaphCare, said.
NaphCare is an Alabama-based company providing healthcare services and software to correctional facilities. They use TeamDynamix for both iPaaS and IT Service Management (ITSM).
Bowden said iPaaS will save him significant time. Currently, setting up and provisioning IT accounts for NaphCare employees is a multi-step process.
NaphCare uses a software program called Adaxes to automate the provisioning of accounts within Active Directory, but IT staff still have to coordinate with both HR staff and the managers of various departments to confirm what IT privileges employees should have—such as whether they should get a free or paid Zoom account. Bowden’s staff includes one full-time employee whose sole responsibility is to perform this work.
With iPaaS in place, NaphCare has created automated workflows for contacting HR and department heads to collect the necessary information. Using iPaaS, Bowden plans to connect TeamDynamix with Adaxes and build a customized workflow to create new user accounts from this information.
Automating this process will enable it to be completed in under five minutes, he says, with very little human intervention needed—freeing up the IT employee responsible for this task to do more strategic work, “That employee can be reallocated to other areas to work on more complex projects,” Bowden said.
There are also plans to automate software provisioning for programs like Microsoft Office.
“It will take me a week, right now, to go in and install Microsoft Office on all the accounts that request it. With automation in place, I won’t need to touch those requests unless there’s a problem. People will be able to go to our portal, put in the request and automatically get the software,” Bowden said. “That’s a full week of time I can get back to work on other things. That will be a huge benefit for us.”
Want to learn more about iPaaS and the positive impact it can have on an organization? Check out the latest market study from InformationWeek: State of IT – Resource Drain.