Managed Integration Services: How to Accelerate Digital Transformation

According to Paul Clark, Global Managing Partner with Ernst & Young, 84% of organizations are adapting their business models to address digital infrastructure weaknesses that were exposed by Covid-19’s disruption to the economy and society.

In Clark’s view—and ours— managed services can help accelerate how businesses adapt to radically altered business supply chain dynamics and customer expectations.

Closer to our wheelhouse, managed services for EDI and related integration skills can be a faster route to resolving onboarding backlogs, plugging specialized skill gaps, and last but not least, a way to accelerate data integration modernization— without the expense of adding specialized talent to your payroll.

That said, not all managed services are the same in the IT industry. Let’s start by explaining how we define them.

What Does Managed Integration Services Mean?

For most people, “managed services” typically means enterprise-level IT services that fall into three buckets:

• Managed IT services partner (networks and infrastructure, security, data governance, compliance, systems, and applications)
• Managed hosting provider or data center to back up on-premise server(s)
• Managed cloud services (hosting, application, and infrastructure management

At Remedi, we define our model as managed integration services.

We help customers use managed integration services to monitor and maintain increasingly complex EDI and integration environments without adding additional resources.

This allows internal staff to focus on other priorities. The approach gives companies the agility they need to stay ahead of the competition. Our customers often find it easier to meet customer expectations for digital speed and convenience.

What’s the Difference Between Managed Integration Services and Outsourcing?

With traditional IT outsourcing, you might hand off all IT infrastructure, systems, and labor including EDI and integration roles to an IT services provider. Often the provider is on the other side of the world. That’s not a bad thing; just a factor to manage for. Your team may just be starting their day as you finish yours.

Managed integration services are more like co-sourcing. This means your business owns or rents your B2B integration solution. You hire us to operate it for you. In this arrangement we provide managed integration. Or in some cases, managed EDI services.

In any event, you decide how much Remedi manages and how much responsibility you want to delegate. You maintain control of your data exchange and B2B integration environments.

At the same time, you avoid big costs. For example, the cost of finding, hiring, and paying benefits to a full-time B2B integration and EDI team.

This is starting to get long so I'll save the tricky question of what you should expect to pay for Managed Integration Services for next time. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

About Remedi

Remedi Electronic Commerce Group helps companies save time and money, provide a better customer experience, and quickly respond to new opportunities using integration and B2B ecommerce strategies built for a digitally driven economy.