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<p>As technology becomes a catalyst for business transformation and strategy, the different functions, IT and front-end business workers, are coming together and the role of IT is shifting, leading a plethora of organizations to reimagine their technology and rethink conventional data-driven operating models and organizational structures. Businesses are leveraging new data-driven technologies that blur the lines between the two functions and enable them to more effectively collaborate, innovate, and concreate new sources of value.&nbsp;</p>
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<p><strong>Why Change is Imperative&nbsp;</strong></p>
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<p>As the speed, scale, and impact of disruption have escalated, there is an emerging need for businesses to facilitate collaboration between IT and business users. Otherwise, the responsibility of implementing and managing all processes, from data onboarding to data integration, falls on the shoulders of IT, which has been the case until now.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Traditionally, IT’s role within an organizational infrastructure was fairly predictable. It was there to carry out and manage the back-end processes. In doing so, IT had to implement lengthy custom codes, perform extensive data mappings, and carry out even more complex, time-consuming processes. Also, during that time, they struggled to focus on more high-value, strategic business priorities that ultimately impacted innovation and growth. Historically, business and IT functions were separate, which often minimized cross-functional collaboration and led to siloed performance, inflexible processes, delayed projects, unhappy customers, and slow revenue.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Businesses have continuously struggled to marry this closed-off IT environment with the front-end business workers in order to function with agility, predict and respond to customer and employee needs, maximize the value of technology investments, predict and deliver on to customer and employee needs, remain competitive, and drive shareholder value. </p>
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<p>Today, however, things have changed. And companies have managed to fuse business and technology strategies into a single unified strategy. They have adopted a new approach that empowers business workers and IT to collaborate and co-create new sources of value, including data, agility, speed, transparency, and digital experiences.</p>
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<p><strong>Reimagine IT and Business&nbsp;</strong></p>
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<p>Surely, businesses that recognize the need for convergence and get it right by reimagining the way they function can move ahead of their competitors.</p>
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<p>Many modern data-driven technologies help organizations bridge the gap between IT and business workers. More so, they bolster the role of IT as innovators by freeing them from managing many data-driven operations. These technologies empower the business workers, with minimal technical expertise, to perform data integration and related steps while freeing IT to focus on more high-value, innovation-driven tasks.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Ultimately, these solutions improve collaboration between the business and IT functions and help companies reimagine the way they do business and yield benefits. Even top-notch leaders like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/simondaykin/"><strong>Simon Daykin</strong></a><strong>, UK CTO at&nbsp;</strong><a href="https://www.leidos.com/"><strong>Leidos</strong></a>&nbsp;agree that collaboration can be of great benefit to businesses in general. “In a digital world, collaboration within organizations is absolutely critical to unlocking the business benefits that come from digital transformation”, says Daykin.&nbsp;</p>
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<p><strong>Self-Service Data Integration Technology Can Be a Game Changer&nbsp;</strong></p>
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<p>Self-service data integration technologies allow the collaborative way of working and create an environment where business workers can handle a fair share of data-driven operations, and where IT can be freed to spend more time on innovation.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>With features such as pre-built connectors, an end-to-end encrypted environment, shared templates, AI-data mapping, and intuitive screens and dashboards, self-service data integration enables business workers to onboard, ingest, transform, and integrate data quickly, securely, and easily. At the same time, IT becomes free to focus on strategic tasks aimed at driving innovation and growth.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>What’s more, self-service data integration solutions empower non-technical business users to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.adeptia.com/faster-digital-onboarding">onboard customers up to 80 percent faster</a>&nbsp;than traditional technologies. That way companies can make a positive impression on customers and deliver on their needs and requirements quickly. Additional value is created when self-service extends to customers themselves; they can self-onboard and better monitor and manage their ongoing digital interaction.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>The self-service approach also ensures that changes are easily made when required. For instance, new fields can be added quickly, which ensures companies can delight their customers with the service - make them stay. That fuels customer retention and improves lifetime values, creating additional paths to revenue growth and <a href="https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers">reducing costs</a>. And because business workers are involved, IT can take up the role of innovator and take the business forward. <br></p>
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<p>So, by giving power to business workers, who either don’t have the expertise or lack tech-savvy skills, to self-create and self-manage, companies can free up IT resources to focus on what really matters, which pushes the business forward. This is the power of self-service data integration - it changes the relationship between IT and business and, most importantly, allows organizations to fit resources to focus on areas that are going to really impact the mission, the front line, in a positive way.</p>
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