Poor integration and lack of supply chain agility costs businesses dear

According to a new survey, 85 percent of companies say they are losing money to integration issues related to their supply chains, with 24 percent admitting to losing $500,000 or more.

The study carried out by Dimensional Research for Cleo shows 14 percent, say they are losing over $1 million per year, up from just 10 percent in each of the previous two years, reflecting a 40 percent year-on-year increase.

The problems are largely down to outdated integration systems and poor business-process integration with their ecosystems. Due to a lack of end-to-end business process visibility, about half (49 percent) of all businesses don't really know what's happening at key integration points across their business transactions.

In 2021, 45 percent of integration experts surveyed said it took between one week and one month to onboard a new supply chain partner, up from 37 percent the year before. And 42 percent say it is taking over a month, up from 36 percent the prior year. Outdated legacy applications, over reliance on manual processes, or too much custom code are hindering partner onboarding for over half of businesses.

"Among business leaders surveyed, supply chain disruption was viewed as second only to cyberthreats as the greatest external risk to their business. Yet many companies are perplexed over how supply chain disruption can be overcome," says Tushar Patel, CMO of Cleo. "They know more automation is needed for supply chain agility, but some still question whether their problems originate internally or with business partners. 'Is it them or is it us?' they wonder, and this uncertainty is stalling investment decisions for some organizations. Meantime, they're bleeding profits and damaging important business relationships."

On a positive note an increasing number of respondents believe that modern cloud-based solutions for B2B integration can help them fix the situation. 69 percent believe ecosystem integration technology can deliver cost savings and boost their bottom line. And 81 percent claim they have begun or will begin migrating their integration capabilities to the cloud over the next 12 months, for its greater data security and control.

The full 2022 State of Ecosystem and Application Integration Report is available from the Cleo site.

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