What is iPaaS and why your business needs it

Stop wasting time switching between software and centralize your business operations – meet the platform that will simplify your workflow and boost your efficiency sky high.
You are a smart business operator who constantly searches for new and better ways to operate, new ways to simplify workflows and improve your efficiency. Then you probably already know that one of the increasingly popular and profitable ways of enhancing business efficiency, gaining market advantage, or just staying competitive is taking on digital transformation.
But the switching between software and support of new systems can be costly, complex, and require months of implementation. You need the efficiency benefits that integration and centralization can bring to your business operations — and staying competitive requires continuously and rapidly adapting to new customer requests, but there is no window of downtime to deliver these upgrades.
Using an oven-ready service that delivers this integration platform as a service that you can use, add, change or adapt on the fly may just be an answer.
Meet the platform that can do just that, iPaaSiPaaS means Integration Platform as a Service. It is a cloud-based platform that facilitates the integration of different applications, systems, and data sources within an organization. iPaaS provides pre-built connectors, data transformation tools, and workflow capabilities, enabling businesses to create seamless data flows and integrate various applications without the need for extensive coding or infrastructure management..
So what is an Integration Platform as a service (iPaaS)?
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is a range of cloud services that enable organizations to develop, use and govern their data; it links applications and processes within the organization, and between multiple organizations.
What that means in plain language is that you pay a small amount for a ‘pay-as-you use’ service that links the applications and processes within your organization with those of your suppliers, customers, and partners. This allows you to quickly, easily, cheaply, and securely transfer all the business messaging you currently exchange and to have all the historic data stored safely and easily accessed. The computing, software, and storage resources are all someone else’s problem to manage, leaving you to fully focus on your core business.
TheOmnizon integration Platform as a Service, or iPaaS, takes this idea and enhances it to ensure that you have the total capability to digitally transform your business’s operational processesand do so rapidly. Because the platform facilitates the integration of applications, data, and messages across heterogeneous IT systems, it allows the business processes that run on them, and between them, to be both linked and automated.
At the heart of the Omnizon integration platform design philosophy is the commitment that configuration of the services should be as easy as possible for you. The Omnizon platform helps to integrate, or connect, all entities and applications within the business ecosystem. It is so easy to define and develop your own processes and data transformations that using it is truly non-disruptive and to make life even easier, it allows you to use already predefined configurations or processes that are familiar to your staff.
iPaaS solutions are usually hosted, or delivered, by one of the large cloud service providers such as Amazon, Azur, or Oracle, which provide security (ISO 27000, up-time, etc.) secure compute, data storage, and Database resources, whilst the iPaaS service from Omnizon provides the tools and cloud-based communication protocols that enable the implementation, management, and integration of software applications, business process digitization, and cross-platform services.
Your iPaaS providers’ job is to make sure everything works, business communications flow, and that your data is secure. But more than that, in order to help ensure you stay ahead of the market Omnizon continues to develop new functionalities.
How does iPaaS work?
A large number of companies use different applications to run their business operations but these are often not interconnected which creates inefficiencies, process gaps, and cost. Still, these applications can be interconnected in a relatively quick and easy way using an integration platform.
One example of how this can work is by using iPaaS to connect different companies to allow them to share different documents that come from disparate, unconnected systems. An integration platform is used to take receipt of documents from one user, it transforms them into a required format that the other, receiving party “understands” and send them directly to that other company’s system in a format that is compatible and therefore removes any errors and delays in local conversion.
The variety of tools used on the integration platform enables data monitoring, process management, the definition of connection processes, and various transformations of data and documents, thereby automating all the heavy lifting and leaving the two businesses to get on with what they are best at.
Another area of use is when customers need to transform or extend a set of data that has been downloaded from one application and needs to be updated, sometimes with new variables added, in a separate application. The traditional method would have required the development of new functionality within the application to enable this update; a time-consuming and costly job, yet by using an integration platform it can now be done faster, easier and cheaper.
iPaaS also delivers the significant benefit of allowing companies who are using a variety of software solutions to extend their functionality by integrating with other new applications instead of having to develop new functionalities within legacy applications.
Digital transformation at the State level can be a costly and alarming prospect. But adapting to new standards for electronic communication introduced by State or Regional governments for communication between companies and the various governmental institutions is no longer a threat to business continuity since compliance can be easily implemented using the iPaaS platform — without the need to adapt and expand applications to meet these new and sometimes ever-changing, requirements.
What are the core capabilities and key functionalities of iPaaS?
Speeding up data transformation
When working with a number of different systems and applications, a business needs to resolve incompatibilities between inputs and outputs — iPaaS automatically transforms it.
Universal connectivity
Connectors enable users to easily integrate new systems, whether cloud-based or location-based.
B2BB2B stands for “business-to-business” and refers to transactions, interactions, and commerce conducted between two or more businesses. It involves the exchange of goods, services, or information between companies rather than between businesses and consumers. Integration
iPaaS has universal capabilities for transforming non-standard document and data formats. It offers support for a wide range of enterprise integration standards, including EDIEDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange. It is a standardized method for exchanging business documents electronically between different computer systems in a structured format. EDI enables the automated exchange of documents such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices between trading partners, helping to streamline and automate business processes., B2B, industry-specific standards such as HL7, and standards-based web services. iPaaS software allows companies to support their customers with all the data formats they use in their ecosystem. These include EDIFACTEDIFACT: Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport is an international standard for structuring electronic data interchange messages. It provides a set of standardized message formats that facilitate the exchange of business documents, such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notifications, between different organizations and computer systems., XMLXML stands for Extensible Markup Language. It is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. XML is widely used for structuring and exchanging data between different systems and platforms, providing a standardized and flexible way to represent information., JSON, and more.
Monitoring and notifying
The software also monitors data to ensure that it is analyzed, accumulated, consumed, and distributed correctly. Furthermore, each time a user completes the integration process, the software returns results notices. This ‘notice’ contains critical information on how long the process took, how many records were made, and how many failed
iPaaS Advantages & Benefits
Trading Benefits
Optimize your B2B data sharing
The platform’s transformation capabilities ensure rapid modification of data and documents to correspond with other companies using different formats and applications. This will improve your responsiveness to changing demands, improve your productivity and enhance business performance and profitability.
The more you can control and predict budgetary events, the better you can control cash flow and minimize cost exposures, making you more profitable.
Grab new opportunities through quicker integration
Flexibly integrate new applications without the need for long-term planning and large expert teams, with all the time and risk cost they carry. You gain speed and agility and reduce upfront investment and exposure meaning you can capitalize on new business streams faster, more efficiently, and more profitably.
Make your data flow real-time
All data sharing and processing is done in real time, which speeds up the flow and removes delays. Your ability and that of partners who benefit from data-sharing to make better-informed decisions more rapidly should gain you both competitive advantage, enhance business performance and improve profitability.
Optimize the organization and use of your data
You set the rules to which your data is organized and accessed — resulting in simpler data analysis and interpretation. By gaining greater control and promoting simplification you reduce the time and cost of both operations and management of ‘events’ and allow you to invest both elsewhere.
Give your staff the tools they need
Anybody within your organization can access the data they need, whenever they need it within the policy limits you define. This gives you ultimate control, speed of data access and ensures that critical resources are at the fingertips of those who need them in a timely yet secure manner. You are thereby maximizing the efficiencies within your business and allowing youself to react and adapt fastest to new opportunities or risks; optimizing profits or minimizing exposures.
Empower your business to scale quickly and cheaply
Your business operations can grow and change to meet rapidly changing business needs without you having to plan, fund, and implement a whole new internal systems integration project. This gives you what all businesses thrive on, the ability of management to flex up or down as business levels and demands fluctuate, optimizing costs and allowing you to maximize profits.
Governance Benefits
Sleep easily: data security and compliance are covered
iPaaS providers follow strict security protocols to ensure your data is safe and help you fulfill your compliance responsibilities. This ensures not only your corporate compliance levels are upheld but also enhances your operational reputation and therefore business growth.
Operational Benefits
Eliminate the chance of confusion with a single source of truth
All data flow and transformation are done within a single system reducing the likelihood of errors that have a time, money, and reputation cost, freeing all three up for other uses.
Simplicity of a single solution with centralized management
As all tools are centralized and integrated, there is no need for using different software, you can access everything from one place. This makes operations cheaper, easier, and more efficient – freeing up time, investment capital, and intellectual resources to be invested profitably elsewhere.
Efficiency from a unified management system
By uniting management in one system,iPaaS lowers the chances of data loss, mistakes, discrepancyand fundamentally removes as many processes as possible from human intervention. Thereduced error rate should improve cost profilesand therefore profit levels, enhance performance and reputation which willimprove business performanceand reduce stress levels for everyone involved thereby improving productivity.
Lower integration investment costs
There’sno need for the ongoing hiring of expensive IT expertsto develop new code that will allow the integration of applications or for you to be carrying the burden of large-scale investments aimed at expanding your infrastructure. The capital cost savings can be considerable butthe transfer of risk reduces your exposure to unforeseen costs and delaysthereby enhancing your productivity.
Additionally, the SaaSSaaS means Software as a Service. It is a software distribution model where applications are hosted and provided to customers over the internet. Instead of installing and maintaining software on individual computers or servers, users can access and use the software through a web browser. SaaS eliminates the need for local installations and allows for easy scalability and remote access. model which offers monthly or annual subscription-based charging makes budgetary and cost planning much easier and expense-flows much smoother.
Today more than ever, in a world subject to constant change, a successful business requires tools and solutions that will quickly and easily transform and adapt its processes to continue working successfully. That is a big ask and most businesses need all the support they can get to successfully achieve this.
With iPaaS, your business can have these tools at its disposal without breaking your bank or investing long man-hours into planning. To find out how, read more about iPaaSorcontact us directly.
Consider Omnizon – your trusted partner
Omnizon is an experienced EDI gateway provider with over a decade of experience in the field. We have worked with big and small clients from many different industries, so you can be sure that you are in safe hands, no matter your area of business. And since we know all about the important standards and protocols used today, you don’t have to. We can help you use the advantages of safe, fast and compliant digital communication with your partners so that you can focus on the big picture instead of dealing with paperwork. Contact us today and let us find the best solution for your business together.
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