By Zahi Yaari, VP of EMEA at SnapLogic

Following on from the Bank of England’s announcement, predicting recession and further inflation, the pressure is being piled on the IT teams in your organisation. C-suite executives need real-time data insights to make decisions, yet at the same time, belts are being tightened, and many IT departments may face headcount or budget freezes. This has already happened at many big tech companies with some slowing down hiring and others cutting their workforces.

The issue here is agility – or rather a lack of it. A business must be agile in the face of such challenges, flexing in the face of oncoming hurdles.

AI and agility

There are a million different uses for data within your business and as such creating workflows needs to be as intuitive and simple as possible. Sales teams for example must be able to connect their favourite apps and boost customer engagement with customized communications, all whilst keeping revenue flowing by automating transaction document delivery, order fulfilment and delivery and payments processes.

This is where AI comes into play. AI solutions can streamline a business by guiding these non-technical users through data tasks that would otherwise require the time and attention of a highly-skilled developer.

Having “AI-gility” within your organisation can thus not only break down data silos within the business but it also can empower your employees to do more for themselves.

Truly modern AI infrastructure can make this process even easier, with “self-driving” software that can enable business users to manage their own data pipelines, freeing up IT teams for value-add tasks.

In the past, businesses used to solve integration problems by throwing armies of developers at the issue. Today, with a focus on simple, low-code/no-code software, these issues can be easily resolved with the power of AI.

Simplicity

Harnessing powerful AI for the average user is nothing new, indeed most of your employees use AI every single day, probably without realising it: for instance, map applications on their smartphones, which use advanced AI to predict the fastest route from A to B.

AI in data integration works in much the same way, using intelligent learning technology to predict the most efficient route for your data.

These solutions learn from vast quantities of historical data, digging through the data mines to produce gold standard suggestions to help users make faster and better decisions.

Modern solutions make this even easier with integration assistants that use AI and ML to suggest the next steps in data pipeline construction with up to 90 percent accuracy: this not only allows for faster individual workflows but also rapidly speeds up the digital transformation of the entire business.

One organisation that truly understood this was Hampshire Banking Trust, who utilised AI integration assistants and simple low-code-no-code infrastructure to connect a plethora of applications and tools together with ease. By shortening development times for integration workflows the IT teams became much more flexible and could focus on growth-fuelling tasks instead of being swamped by repetitive chores.

Futureproofing

Modern software solutions are not only faster and more accurate but most importantly more futureproof, increasing a business’s ability to remain agile in the face of oncoming challenges.

As these AI and ML technologies are continuing to learn, businesses can be confident that both present and future challenges can be tackled, with scalable infrastructure that can transfer data from virtually any source – spanning applications and data as well as legacy and cloud environments.

While no-one knows what the future holds, as data grows in value and its collection increases in volume, being able to adapt and break down barriers within your business is the key to handling any situation.

Keeping it cohesive

In many businesses there is an adversarial relationship developing between the individual contributor and their technology teams, as business users try to make the most out of their tech tools, whilst IT staff try to keep the business and its teams as one cohesive unit.

With the constant innovation in applications and tools, business users have less need to involve IT, as they can ‘DIY’ solutions for themselves, but this independence is sending teams in very different directions and creating continuity chaos within the business.

This can be its own agility challenge, as on the one hand users can feel unsupported by their IT support, while on the other hand, a chaotic mess of tools and tech can leave a business hamstrung.

AI and ML integration technologies can help pull together individual contributors in a cohesive way, through automating integrations and empowering users to make their own pipelines, whilst still giving IT complete oversight and control over the nervous system of the business.

This allows individuals to develop themselves and their teams while still keeping a sense of stability, meaning the organisation can remain agile and responsive in the face of future and present challenges.

The time is now

Ultimately, keeping agile means shedding the barriers between your business and ensuring that it functions as one, flexible unit. By adopting powerful AI technologies that can unify your data in one platform you can ensure that you can connect the dots within your business, whether between your data or your employees.

AI can enable, simplify and empower your data, turbocharging agility within your organisation and allowing your most important employees to get on with the most important tasks.