Within an organization, integration can improve efficiencies and experiences for employees. But what are the benefits of connecting everything that matters from an industry-wide perspective? When companies seamlessly connect to suppliers, customers, partners and even regulators, it can critically impact how the world works: Public infrastructure is built on time and on budget, energy is delivered safely and consistently, and pharmaceutical therapies come to market quickly, just to name a few examples.
In today’s fast-paced industries, integration is everything. It must happen automatically, without requiring extra steps or intermediaries. It must happen reliably, so that processes can be built on the expectation that the right data will be available at the right time and place. And it must happen efficiently, so collaboration and innovation can flow.
Here are a few examples of how integration keeps industries – and the world around us – moving.
Connections count in the public sector
The U.S. government’s 2021 Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA) is an ambitious project to rebuild American roads, bridges and rails and expand access to clean drinking water, safe energy and high-speed internet, among other things. This $1.2 trillion federal aid plan requires a high level of collaboration among the various players. That means state, local, tribal and territorial government agencies plus ecosystems of labor unions, suppliers, contractors and other partners must work from connected systems that will become the backbone of each implementation, and therefore instrumental to success.
These systems and data sources must be tightly integrated to increase equity, resilience, safety and compliance of infrastructure projects while reducing operating risk and cost. Here’s where the right technology is essential. For example, agencies can use data from IoT platforms to optimize transportation routes, monitor physical assets, exchange sustainability data and help them decide whether they repair or replace infrastructure. And integrated DAM platforms allow field workers to ensure the large-scale audio and drone footage taken on site is automatically ingested into project management systems, distributed across the enterprise and made available for progress reporting.
Integrating information in the energy industry
In the energy industry, up to 80% of employees’ time is spent searching through unstructured information to get work done. This could mean sifting through asset repair manuals, scanning regulatory documentation for the latest specification or pouring over engineering drawings to find the right schematic. These delays impact the task at hand – safely delivering energy to the world. And it is becoming a bigger problem as global energy prices rise significantly due to constrained supply with rising demand. That demand will increase with the world’s population, which is projected by the United Nations to grow 25% to 9.7 billion by 2050.
In the energy industry, up to 80% of employees’ time is spent searching through unstructured information to get work done.
Oil and GAs has a problem with unstructured data, Journal of Petroleum technology
Connecting to everything that matters improves energy operations by ensuring the right information is delivered to the right people at the right time, whether they are decision makers at headquarters or contractors in the field. To do this, content can’t be managed in silos; it must be shared and integrated into critical systems. For example, when energy companies securely connect equipment-sensor information with suppliers, those partners can establish uptime guarantees for their assets. This aligns energy companies and their suppliers with the same goal – keeping assets running so energy is continuously delivered.
The world is in a race to sustainably supply cost-effective energy; success is dependent on integrated information management.
Integration boosts insight in life sciences
In life sciences companies, essential data from a variety of siloed sources is typically stored in disparate systems across many different functional areas. This constrains agility and efficiency in an industry that the pandemic has thrown into the spotlight. Now more than ever, life sciences companies need to move quickly and purposefully to bring new therapies to market. And they are dependent on internal and external collaboration to make this happen.
Life sciences companies need to connect essential systems across multiple functional areas to minimize risk by ensuring compliance information is readily available, remove redundant data so employees can focus on business-essential information, and decommission legacy applications and systems to control costs. For example, clinical trials need better, faster integration of the information sent by mail, email, faxes, phone calls, online forms, and IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) data from healthcare professionals, contract researchers and manufacturers, external labs and patients over the course of a trial. Integrating this information means faster time to insight and actionable intelligence so that new therapies can be submitted to regulators quickly and cost effectively and have a higher chance of approval.
Learn more about how OpenText™ industry solutions can help you connect to everything that matters in your industry.
–LaRel Rogers, Phil Schwarz and Ferdi Steinmann contributed to this blog.
