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The two volumes of the buyer's manual to customer engagement platforms were built based on research. According to this research, most problems encountered when implementing loyal customer engagement software are:
- Confusion between a platform and a solution.
- Unsure whether to build your solution in-house or buy one from a third party.
It's time to talk about point vs. integrated platform after covering the debate around build vs. buy. You will value customization over a single function.
It is also one of the most important factors in deciding whether to swing either way. The decision to choose the best software solution for your company can be a difficult one, and it has long-lasting implications.
Many companies may debate whether they should adopt one or several best-of-breed point solutions or an integrated platform that can address multiple processes and functionalities.
The correct answer will depend on your company's needs and specific circumstances. There are still some important differences to consider when making a decision.
Before we compare the pros and cons, let's first establish what the differences are between an integrated platform and a single-point solution.
Point Solutions
Each solution is tailored to a specific functional requirement within your ecommerce business. You'll need to find a solution that has a feature set of the highest quality to appeal to those who will be performing the task it is helping to perform.
Be sure that it is a leader in its particular niche. Note that every point system must be interconnected with another point system. Integration of data and systems becomes more important as the number of point systems grows.
The cost to maintain IT staff or administrative staff for these integrations is significant. The costs associated with training and administration of multiple interfaces, as well as contracting multiple vendors and dealing with them, should be taken into consideration.
A point solution is a device, good, or service that fulfills a single value proposition for an organization. Software for space management, help desks, booking rooms, or planning maintenance are a few examples of point solutions.
The problem with point solutions is that they only serve a single goal and have few broad features. Businesses frequently end up installing a number of point solutions from various vendors. Additionally, each will need to be updated and maintained, which increases costs.
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The Following Four Factors will Influence the Decision You Make to Choose Your Best Strategy:
Time Factor
Point solutions are simpler to install, and they solve problems more quickly. When selecting a point solution, you should also consider the costs of Integration Consulting and maintenance.
Platform solutions, on the other hand, are investments that will last a long time.
Budget Factor
In terms of budget, long-term platform solutions could be more beneficial than a short-term solution. A detailed ROI calculation is essential to arrive at the best solution.
The Pitfalls Endurance Factor
Platforms are a big undertaking and require a lot of investment up front. Every project has its own set of pitfalls.
Being prepared on your developers' end will allow you to overcome these obstacles and not disrupt processes.
Approach Factor
Consider your overall strategy when choosing between a platform and a point solution. Also, know what you want to achieve in the next 3-5 years.
You should ask yourself if the technology stack you are using will allow your organization to achieve its business goals.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Point Solution
Point Solutions typically solve a specific problem. Point Solutions excel in its specific area of functionality due to its specialization.
Point Solutions include room booking software, helpdesk, space management, and maintenance planning. A Point Solution's strength is also its flaw: it only addresses one problem. Multiple Point Solutions are required to solve different problems.
These Point Solutions must share data, which implies complexity, inconsistency, and risk.
Why are Point Solutions Not Built for the Mobile-First World?
Best-of-breed solutions can solve the problem at hand, but only with one focus. It leads to a proliferation of pain-point-specific solutions that not only hinder communication but can also negatively impact the omnichannel marketing seamless customer experience.
A point solution can be problematic in this mobile-first era. Let's take a closer look.
Delay in Understanding the Technicalities
While platforms integrate easily with your current stack, your team will need to learn how point solutions work.
Instead of focusing on the task at hand and understanding the framework, you need to train your multichannel marketing team to achieve the best possible results. It takes time to understand the technicalities and settle in. It's great to implement a scalable solution that improves your business process.
Still, it should also be integrated smoothly and play well with the existing software stack.
Fast Delivery without Sacrificing Integration in Stages
A point solution's quick delivery is one of its most cited benefits. Through an agile framework, integrated platforms can provide a faster rollout while still ensuring that the platform can expand as your business grows.
With the assistance of a development team, you can integrate features in a step-by-step manner, according to your business needs and understanding, while staying up to date with market advances.
Too Specific Solutions have Limitations
As we've discussed in the entire article, they can solve one problem but require you to use new technology to complete other tasks.
You can resolve multiple business use cases with an integrated platform without having to move onto a different platform.
Scalability is Limited
An integrated platform allows you to solve several problems while remaining flexible to add new functionalities.
As your company grows, you can easily expand. You only need to contact the vendor, and their development team can help you customize the software to your needs. This level of customization is impossible with a point solution.
Absence of Long-Term Benefit
A point solution that offers a quick fix to a problem might seem lucrative. However, it would be best if you considered the larger picture and how scalability is important.
It would be best if you always remembered that the long-term advantages of an integrated platform are greater than any short-term gains.
A platform that is integrated will provide you with scalability, flexibility, profits, and exponential ROI. It can also help your business grow and reap the long-term rewards of being future-ready.
Integrated Platforms
An integrated platform might not offer all of the features and benefits that a single-function point solution offers, but a solution that is truly integrated will connect processes and data from different functions and modules.
It is no longer necessary for IT staff or others to carry out the Integration Strategy.
The collection and storage of data in a single database eliminates the need to enter data into different systems, consolidate and reconcile data and use it for reporting, analysis, and making decisions.
It reduces the time and cost of manual processes, as well as human errors.
An integrated platform eliminates the need to deal with several vendors to solve problems. Instead, customer loyalty can turn to one vendor for help.
Vendors cannot point the finger at one another when problems occur.
An integrated platform is a benefit to organizations. However, it also presents challenges. A system that impacts multiple functions and employees across an organization requires employee training and new skill development.
Change management is also required throughout the company. Senior management must be involved in overcoming resistance to change.
In the process of implementation, it can also take a lot of time to determine what functions and processes should be integrated.
These issues can be addressed by finding an industry-specific solution that streamlines and accommodates your business's core processes. This will reduce the implementation time.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Integrated Solutions
Integrated Solutions solve multiple business issues from a single software application that uses a database. A single integrated solution allows for the purchase and implementation of a software product, ensuring that all data is consistently stored and used only once.
It also supports the automatic connection between processes and facilitates reports across processes.
An integrated solution typically supports several processes, including real estate, workplace and space management, asset and maintenance management, sustainability, and integrated services management.
An Integrated Solution has a wider implementation than a Point Solution, and data exchange is simplified.
Read More: Integration Consulting: Helping Businesses To Learn From Failure
What are the Advantages of Selecting a Platform for Your Business?
- Platforms are more adaptable and can be expanded to meet the demands of your business.
- Platforms are scalable and can be adapted to the changing market needs. Do not compromise on the scalability of your platform because you are only barely meeting current requirements.
- By utilizing a platform, you can better utilize your resources and differentiate yourself.
- Due to the healthy ecosystem of partners, a platform allows for testing with many different features and solutions.
Streamlining Your Organization with Point Solutions and Integrated Platforms
Businesses of all types are mandated to automate and streamline cross-functional processes to increase organizational productivity, improve customer behavior satisfaction, maximize profit margins, and minimize risks with these two.
Companies claim that simplifying the end-to-end process can help reduce fixed costs by up to 30% and increase customer base service delivery. It also increases customer satisfaction and revenue by between 5% and 5%.
The integrations required to connect multiple-point solutions to different databases limit a company's ability to adapt to organizational change.
If you are not careful, the best point solutions may address a pain point quickly and at a lower cost. However, too many discrete point solutions could lead to productivity issues down the line. It limits the ability of an organization to scale its services and may end up being more expensive.
When faced with this choice, organizations need to assess their current and future needs. Imagine that your company has complex needs for data processing and wants to adopt best practices that address the personalized experience of underlying relationships between various workflows and processes.
You may then look at an integrated platform.
It isn't to say, however, that in certain circumstances, point solutions may not be the best option. Best-of-breed software can be a great point solution for organizations with simple processes but discrete requirements, like billing and basic accounting.
Families Offices: Considerations
When do point solutions have the greatest value? Point solutions are a great option for organizations that have well-defined, straightforward needs but only in a few functional areas.
In family offices, for instance, those who are solely focused on the performance of investments and do not need to manage to account for various trusts, etc., may find that a point solution is sufficient for reporting investment performance. A standalone document management system could be enough in this case. This system can reduce the inefficiency of organizing and archiving documents.
Many offices in the business we work for, which are family offices, manage wealth and the affairs of families with ultra-high net worth.
They use different systems to perform functions like accounting, wealth, and customer testimonials management. They use spreadsheets to consolidate and analyze data. It can lead to inefficiencies, wasting time and money. Expensive personnel may spend countless hours on spreadsheets to produce reports.
While the number of employees in some offices is relatively low, their process needs can be complex, involving multiple interdependencies between legal entities, members of the family, assets, and liabilities.
Software solutions, such as those for general ledger, investment reporting, fund accounting, and document management, may not be able to address the complexities of the family office or integrate the best cross-functional practices.
The family office needs to implement best practices that involve multiple functional areas, personnel, and other factors, such as reviewing and approving transactions, authorizing them, and segregating duties, to maintain transparency and control risk.
These practices can be embedded in the system using an integrated platform.
It can be difficult for many organizations to select the best software solutions that will help them manage their facilities and real estate in the future.
There are two popular choices: deploying a single integrated solution, or a mixture of point solutions called a "best-of-breed strategy." This blog will describe the two different options and raise the question, "Does it matter which one you choose?"
The use of software for facility and real estate management is becoming more common due to the increased focus on operational excellence and measurable business values.
These software solutions are usually justified by themes such as portfolio transparency, control and efficiency in processing, cost savings, the agility of the organization, customer service value, compliance, etc.
Many organizations, however, have consistent experience difficulties in selecting the correct software, as evidenced by some implementations of software that do not produce the desired results.
The reasons for failure are varied but include gaps between expectations, underestimated marketing effort during change management and implementation, as well as unexpected complexity of IT operations and technology.
Difference Between a Point Solution and an Integrated Solution for Your Business
There are two fundamental differences between an integrated platform and a single-point solution: Flexibility and Scalability.
By utilizing the best features, point solutions are designed to fill a specific functional gap in a particular single channel or marketing channel. A platform that is integrated can solve multiple problems and be used across various business functions. A platform that is integrated is a combination of software with intelligent design and a partner ecosystem to support it.
This allows for the best possible solution to be created to address current needs while also scaling up to accommodate future ones.
Platforms not only deliver on their value propositions but also increase your ROI through Integration Solutions Implementation and partner ecosystem. A robust, versatile, and integrated platform is a proven growth accelerator for businesses.
While a point solution is perfect for its purpose, it has a limited scope of application. If you want to customize or make changes to your product, then you will have to follow the release schedule of the vendor.
Platform solutions may make it look like customizability and expanding to other functions is easy. However, integrating and partnering with partners and marketing automation platforms takes time and effort. You are then stuck with multiple solutions that do not work well together, which creates silos and little to no relevant communication.
This leads to the breakdown of collaboration.
Problems with Implementation and a Solution in a Single Point
The problem with implementing point solutions for your omnichannel experience strategy is, as we have already discussed, that they can create organizational silos and limit access to digital channel-wide processes and customer profiles.
Point solutions that create silos are not a good idea in today's environment, where potential customers and brands want seamless experiences on all impactful channels of customer journey or growth journey.
An integrated platform can optimize omnichannel strategy business processes and enable seamless data exchange. Still, it also requires a larger investment upfront and a major organizational change.
The choice of a vendor is crucial. It's important to analyze the ROI of the integration time and to manage the entire implementation process.
Read More: The Benefits of Integrations Consulting
Choosing the Best Solution for Your Company Involves Several Factors
We'll break it down to make sure you know what you need. Let's look at some of these factors:
Time
You have to be able to launch a product quickly if you are under a strict time limit. Beware of integration and maintenance fees.
You can opt for an integrated platform if your company values the long term over the short term digital transformation.
Budget
Calculate ROI based on the requirements of each department in terms of point solutions and the costs incurred to get an organization-wide integrated platform.
If the benefits of an integrated platform outweigh the cost, then it is the right choice. Make sure the person or team calculating ROI has an understanding of how integrated platforms can result in cost savings and increased revenue.
Strategy
The future strategy of the business and its roadmap is essential to deciding whether or not you should go for a platform integrated with a solution.
Engage stakeholders and the C-suite to determine if you need a single-point solution to help drive your growth. Ask yourself if your current solution will be able to handle future growth or if it's going to need retooling in the near term.
Your IT department will be able to manage multiple standalone point solutions, or is an integrated platform easier to maintain? You will have a better idea of how to select the best solution if you answer these questions.
Resources Allocation
Although a single-point solution does not offer communication tracking, 360-degree views of customers, or reporting and analytics across channels, an integrated platform also comes with some issues that are worth considering.
The first issue is large upfront investments and the commitment to them.
Second, you'll need to have a backup team in the event of a snag. You can use a temporary solution until you can allocate the resources needed and create a dedicated team.
After you've weighed the benefits and drawbacks of a point solution versus an integrated one, you can now make a better choice.
Choose the Best Platform with Your Needs
- Comparing your core needs with those of the community provider will help you determine if they can meet your requirements.
- Test the growth, robustness, and drive engagement of the ecosystem.
- Ask about the health and status of the roadmap, and request a walkthrough to better understand plans. Check if these align with yours.
- You can also check out the API documentation to see how easy it is to use.
Make a Choice
The vendor landscape is also not helpful. Local vendors have a wide variety of software products. What makes them different, though? The typology of a software solution is one important way to differentiate them: integrated or point solutions.
We will briefly explain their respective strengths and weaknesses.
You now know the difference between an integrated and a point solution. How can you make the most of this knowledge to create an IT infrastructure for real estate management and facilities management? In five years, it was recommended to cover all functional requirements using one software solution or to embed several point solutions which together addressed the needs most effectively.
It's time to alter our perspective on this.
We are therefore moving from an "either/or" to a "both/and" attitude, viewing point solutions in a complementary way to integrated solutions.
The cross channel marketing hub platform provides corporate solutions and ensures consistency and data quality with a single source of fact that includes all the required local technology and specialized applications. Then, an integrated solution can be combined with point solutions.
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Conclusion
We hope that this comparison has made it easier for you to comprehend the advantages and disadvantages. If you're still unclear, don't worry; we'll review the advantages of an integrated platform, explain why point solutions won't work in a mobile-first environment, and offer you some guidance on how to make decisions.
Every organization must decide between improving processes with best-of-breed point solutions or an integrated platform.
When making a decision, it is important to consider the importance of data and Magento Integration in order to achieve long-term benefits.
