EDITOR’S QUESTION What are the opportunities for channel partners in helping enterprises to remove departmental silos and integrate front office, middle office, and back-office operations? This month we present responses from executives of Omnix Digital, Fortinet, Check Point Software, and Liferay.
One of the primary ways channel partners can assist enterprises is by conducting an assessment of the state of operations. This assessment identifies existing silos and areas for improvement. The integration plan should include timelines, milestones, metrics to measure progress.
As enterprises continue to evolve and grow, so do their departments and systems. However, with this growth, often comes the risk of creating departmental silos – where each department might operate independently without sharing information or resources. This can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities
Apart from formulating the integration plan, channel partners possess the technical proficiency to assist enterprises in choosing suitable tools and systems to integrate into their current infrastructure. Achieving integration also requires changes in business processes and workflows, which can be challenging for employees to adjust to.
To eliminate silos between the front, middle, and back offices, CIOs must have clear business objectives and goals that align operations, transaction management, overall financial management and other support functions with the aim of creating superior experiences for customers.
Partners must ensure that they are able to successfully implement vendor standards and mutually agreed and aligned services through performance metrics on customer journeys.
Channel partners need to understand where the customer’s needs lie and provide the help they need at a level they already master, while striving to go further in increasing value. Channel partners can offer training and support to employees to help them adapt to new ways of working. This ongoing support ensures that integration efforts continue to deliver value over the long term.
Channel partners are a valuable asset for enterprises seeking to remove departmental silos and integrate operations. By working collaboratively with channel partners, enterprises can achieve successful integration, break down silos, and position themselves for success in a rapidly changing business environment.
Walid Gomaa, CEO, Omnix Digital
As enterprises continue to evolve and grow, so do their departments and systems. However, with this growth, often comes the risk of creating departmental silos – where each department might operate independently without sharing information or resources. This can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Omnix, a leading services provider, has recognized this problem and has created multiple offerings to help companies integrate their front-office, middle-office, and back-office operations.
Omnix provides a comprehensive set of tools and services that allow companies to streamline their operations, remove departmental silos, and increase collaboration across teams. Omnix can offer a range of services, including software implementation, application modernization, application integration, process automation, data management and managed services. This creates a more efficient and effective operation, leading to better business outcomes and increased customer satisfaction.
In addition to providing a solution to departmental silos, Omnix’s software suite also includes powerful analytics and reporting tools. This allows companies to gain insight into their operations, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions and hence creates a more agile and responsive organization that is better equipped to meet the needs of their customers and stay ahead competitors.
Overall, the opportunities to help enterprises remove departmental silos and integrate their operations are significant. By partnering with Omnix, enterprises will receive valuable service, while also growing their business. It’s a win-win situation that is sure to be of interest to any channel partner looking to expand their offerings and provide more value to their clients.
Prashant Menon, Channel Manager UAE, Check Point Software Technologies
Enterprises seeking to eliminate departmental silos and integrate their operations across the front, middle, and back-office can greatly benefit from the assistance of channel partners. These partners possess essential expertise and specialised knowledge in both technology and business processes, which positions them as valuable allies in overcoming the challenges that arise during integration.
One of the primary ways channel partners can assist enterprises is by conducting a thorough assessment of the current state of operations. This assessment identifies existing silos and areas for improvement, which forms the basis for developing a comprehensive integration plan. The integration plan should include timelines, milestones, and metrics to measure progress, ensuring that integration efforts remain on track.
Apart from formulating the integration plan, channel partners possess the technical proficiency to assist enterprises in choosing suitable tools and systems to integrate into their current infrastructure. These experts ensure that the selected technology fulfils the requirements of the business and is in line with its overarching objectives.
Achieving integration also requires changes in business processes and workflows, which can be challenging for employees to adjust to. Channel partners can offer training and support to employees to help them adapt to new ways of working. By doing so, they can help ensure that the integration process runs smoothly, minimising disruptions to daily operations.
Finally, channel partners can monitor and optimise the integration process by identifying areas of inefficiency and developing new processes and workflows to eliminate them. This ongoing support ensures that integration efforts continue to deliver value over the long term.
In summary, channel partners are a valuable asset for enterprises seeking to remove departmental silos and integrate operations. They bring a wealth of experience and knowledge, helping businesses streamline their operations, improve collaboration, and enhance overall efficiency. By working collaboratively with channel partners, enterprises can achieve successful integration, break down silos, and position themselves for success in a rapidly changing business environment.
Shane Grennan, Senior Director, Partner Sales and Business Development Middle East, Fortinet
Silos exist because of the lack of effective collaboration between teams, the modern enterprise can no longer afford to delay the speed of business in a highly competitive world. In addition, adding security as an afterthought almost inevitably leads to problems. When security solutions are not well integrated with one another or the underlying network, security risks and gaps can arise as the attack surface expands and adapts.
By having IT and security collaborate at the front end of the planning process, you end up with a solution that is secure by design rather than leaving security to be addressed as an afterthought. Channel partners should better understand customers’ business driven projects and help them build solutions in a secure manner, while not adding friction to information flow.
Most organisations are selecting either a hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud deployment approach to integrate multiple services and provide scalability. This model enables organisations big and small to allow critical data and essential applications to reside anywhere, on-premises, on campuses, at home offices, at branch offices, in the datacentre, or the cloud. And wherever these applications reside need to be transparent to the user. This is where Fortinet comes in to offer a unified platform approach to cloud security.
Some Fortinet partners, who have been ahead of the curve and learned from it, are providing guidance on the technical strategy for this evolution. Some Fortinet partners also provide enterprise-level guidance on how the cloud can be used to drive digital transformation. Others focus on the operational support required to help move customer workloads to the cloud.
These three strategies are at different stages of a customer’s cloud journey and provide different levels of value. As always, channel partners need to understand where the customer’s needs lie and provide the help they need at a level they already master, while striving to go further in increasing value.
Ahmad Saad, Country Manager UAE and Qatar, Liferay MEA
Departmental silos have always been a hurdle to achieve elevated CX. Silos make it difficult for the enterprise systems to interpret customer data and provides incomplete intelligence which could mean detrimental to efficient and accurate customer experiences.
Therefore, to eliminate the silos between the front, middle, and back offices, CIOs must have clear business objectives and goals that align operations, transaction management, overall financial management and other support functions with the aim of creating superior experiences for customers.
The need for customer centricity is now being felt across the C-suite and vendors continue to rely on external business partners as implementors to achieve end-to-end customer experiences for customers. Some of the key areas that channel partners look to achieve for their customers in delivering optimum experiences are:
Improve efficiency: This one is a no brainer but many companies are still struggling to streamline operations. Partners, a key stakeholder group, empower companies to break silos across different apps and processes to access the right and most updated information. This will help avoid delays and redundant efforts associated with duplicate data and increased time used to transfer information across multiple systems. This therefore enables improved results and increased customer satisfaction/experiences in the long run.
Increase visibility: It remains imperative for businesses to gain complete and accurate understanding of customer management and areas of potential growth. Fragmented and disparate data across different siloes causes companies multiple problems. This means avoiding any shortfalls such as missed opportunities, making favourable business decisions, increased accountability and seamless communication remains vital.
With connected technology, and role-specific access to relevant, up-to-date information with a single DXP platform such as interface such as website, intranet, etc., businesses gain with improved visibility, time-saving and cohesive experiences.
Enhanced customer satisfaction: Siloed data can lead to delays, misinterpretation, and disgruntled customers. By integrating data across the organisation, professional and financial services firms can significantly improve service and engagement with tailored offerings and increased customer experiences.
Efficient use of resources: Streamlining data into one source frees up precious storage and relieves IT stress in buying and maintaining storage that may not be needed.
Establish a shared commitment to and accountability for CX: Partners must ensure that they are able to successfully implement vendor standards and mutually agreed and aligned services through performance metrics on customer journeys.
Simply speaking, organised end to end systems across operations is vital in today’s competitive business landscape to improve overall business efficiency. And let us not forget the EX is the heart of carrying out this entire overhaul within a business.
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