Jitterbit, the API transformation company, has revealed its first ever Integration Trends Report. It gives an unparalleled view of how companies responded to the seismic challenges of the global pandemic – and how they are building back stronger.

Analysing anonymised data of over 2,000 customers across EMEA from 2020 – 2021, the report reveals macro trends across markets as companies innovated to meet rapidly changing customer needs, move more of their services online and enable remote working for employees.

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“The trends emerging all point to a need to move quickly and provide the highest level of product, service and employee experience in order to compete and survive, with companies turning to no-code/ low-code and microservices in readiness for the next stage of hypergrowth.”

“The trends emerging all point to a need to move quickly and provide the highest level of product, service and employee experience in order to compete and survive, with companies turning to no-code/ low-code and microservices in readiness for the next stage of hypergrowth.” said Steve Sichtman, VP Multi Channel Development, Jitterbit

Rather than freeze or reduce spend on integrating new technologies, companies actively sought to spend more on integration across a number of key areas:

Service Experience and eCommerce Spend

– With many physical locations closed or severely disrupted in 2020 and unprecedented customer demand for online service, companies responded by increasing their eCommerce integration investment by 99% during the year.

– Companies increased spend on Services Experience 360 on average by 50% in 2020. Growth in the services front-end with applications such as BMC Helix ITSM, Jira, Zendesk and others was also matched with growth in the services back-end around IT operations.

Product Experience

– Companies increased their spend on Product 360 (optimizing the product life cycle) in 2020 by 26%.

– Data from 2020 reveals a double digit increase in demand around large ERP systems from vendors like SAP and Microsoft. Optimizing business processes was a key focus as businesses realized the essential value of having automated processes across the entire manufacturing, supply chain and sales processes.

Employee Experience

Companies increased their spend on Employee Experience 360 in 2020 by 72%. Increased reliance on a remote workforce, new communications tools, and fluctuating budgets all contributed to this increased focus on employee experience.

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Low-code, microservice and marketplace popularity

– Low-code and no-code gained popularity because of the many hyper automation benefits it offers to IT teams, becoming in the process a key differentiator when selecting an integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS).

– Many companies have already moved to microservices, rather than API, architecture. Self-contained and ready to go, microservices can be plugged into a wide array of applications and leveraged throughout an organization. Now, there’s evidence of increased demand for iPaaS systems that work closely with microservices. This empowers business users to plug different microservices together to create specialized applications without no-code.

– Many Enterprise and Software companies are finding it’s no longer sufficient to offer an API for the outside world to connect to them. They must overcome the “integration burden” to improve retention and stickiness. The answer lies in integration marketplaces where companies can offer pre-built and certified API integrations and solutions to their partners and customers.

This Integration Trends report demonstrates how trends in integration technology – the way modern businesses automate the connections between the myriad softwares, platforms and technologies they deploy – reflect how businesses respond to meet the macro challenges and opportunities they face.

The report also provides actionable insights on what businesses now need to focus on as countries across EMEA move into the post-pandemic period.

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