No App is an Island: Integration of Enterprise Systems, with Celigo
Many businesses today use several dozens, if not hundreds of applications to help get the job done. Whether that’s marketing technologies, HR management software, sales-oriented systems, or large-scale solutions like ERP; the average enterprise probably uses over a hundred apps, and often many times that number.
Organizations older than startups will have embedded systems, sometimes based in-house, some having migrated to the cloud.
As new solutions and exciting disruptive technologies come along, many organizations, emboldened by pay-as-you-use pricing, may begin to use a more colorful palette of solutions. The distributed nature of the overall portfolio means that integration of these systems is increasingly difficult.
As more applications are spun up and others retired, getting these disparate pieces of technology to talk to one another is highly problematic.
As a direct response to this new wave of software as-a-service provisions, Celigo rewrote its integration platform from the ground up in 2016. Its purpose is to make it easier for anyone to integrate applications and business processes in an organization. End-users may be tech-saavy business users, IT and Operations who may require greater flexibility for advanced configurations and customizations.
But even over and above consolidated intelligence, Celigo’s platform synchronizes data that each user needs in the applications they prefer using. Furthermore, transactional data can keep moving automatically through a business process. As an example: an online order goes to finance for invoicing & approval, then moves to fulfillment once approved.
Celigo’s approach is one of guided design, not a “blank canvas”. It’s a full iPaaS platform which allows customizations to be made to prebuilt models very quickly. Of course, like many powerful systems designed to simplify and automate the highly complex, there’s no simplistic route to complex customizations that can be mastered in minutes. But, the capability is right there – investments made here pay massive dividends.
Users are of course welcome to create automated workflows across discrete applications from scratch themselves, but our experience at TechHQ, the catalog of readymades offered by the platform covered all the bases.
Suggestions made by the solutions as we were building our tests seemed intelligent to the point of being almost prescient – it was almost as if the platform had “been there” before. Of course, in all likelihood, it probably has; it’s built on the experiences of the company’s 1,700+ customers across the globe.
In addition, Celigo takes popular integrations and licenses these as prebuilt integration apps called SmartConnectors. The SmartConnectors are built on the integrator.io iPaaS, so they allow for customization as the needs of the organization require. The advantage to the end-user in the enterprise is that as each of the connected applications gets updated by its makers, the work of changing API access is undertaken by Celigo, not the IT department.
Celigo
The third advantage of the California-based company’s offerings is that its customers pay for the connections between applications that are needed – Celigo calls them “flows” – as opposed to paying per endpoint, per user or by the MB of traffic between apps.
As an example, a typical Salesforce integration uses 32 flows so integrating business processes with this enterprise stalwart will not break the bank, even for many multiple thousand users. But most integrations are less complex, inherently: a help request ticket from Jira passed into Slack for instance only comprises one flow – but can be made use of by thousands of personnel every day.
The different subscription tiers each offer a set number of flows, with additional flow bundles available to further extend the function of the platform. Removing older flows as they fall out of use, of course, means those flows can be reallocated.
Barriers to iPaaS integration are therefore lowered – Celigo’s solutions are cloud-ready plus offer a distinct cost advantage.
Celigo’s iPaaS platform is the foundational cornerstone of interconnected businesses; as strategies & policies change, new apps and services can be integrated into existing workflows and automations. Rather than gathering apps, and then attempting to plug them together, think of the Celigo solution as the basis on which enterprises can build. The company calls this next-generation scenario iPaaS 2.0.
Celigo is particularly strong in the NetSuite, Salesforce, and Shopify ecosystems, with many of its customers in software, retail, and services. It also offers several particular discreet integration possibilities, including NetSuite data flowing into Outlook or Excel on end-users’ desktops, for example. These are marketed as the CloudExtend brand.
Right across the full gamut of enterprise software, from collaboration to sales and CRM, Celigo’s prebuilt SmartConnectors can be used either as-is or as the basis of more intricate, bespoke interfaces & interconnections. For those enterprises with a higher level of technical acumen, there is, of course, access to each connector at API level, although the inherent power out-of-the-box will get most organizations up and running very quickly indeed.
An app isn’t an app until it’s integrated — learn how Celigo’s integration solutions are both powerful and representative of excellent value for money. Connect with Celigo today, to learn about how its cloud-based iPaaS solutions can connect to your enterprise’s systems, aiding you along the path to fully unified digital transformation.
