IT and business leaders the world over have either had to pivot or significantly revise their business models and internal operations over the last two years. This has been driven by the need to better serve their digital customers, to deliver more via the web, and to automate as many tasks as possible. According to Gartner, a recent study showed that “...67% of Board of Directors (BODs) expect that digital technology initiatives will serve as the top strategic business priority for the next two years.”
With so much riding on technology initiatives, it stands to reason that choosing the right partners has become a critical and sometimes risky decision, affecting more than just your bottom line. But when it comes down to creating that list of pros and cons, what exactly should you be looking for in an integration partner?
Jamie Peers, VP of Business Development and Alliances at Synatic, spent some time sharing the company's thoughts regarding the challenges facing today’s leaders and just what it is those leaders are looking for when it comes to building a trusted long-term partnership.
Peers oversees the strategic growth of the business, new market entries as well as managing staff for growth. A large part of his work centers around better understanding what current and new clients are looking for.
“Most folk we engage with are looking for a new and dynamic way to engage. They are sick and tired of the old-school, lengthy timelines that are still standard in the industry. They want someone they can trust. Someone that they can build a relationship with over time,” he says.
Business leaders are now much more interested in customer retention and have moved past the obsession with customer acquisition that many businesses were chasing just a few years ago.
“The current economy has forced businesses to focus on customer retention and augmentation, more than customer acquisition. For instance, a typical insurance company will lose between 7.5 and 12.5% of their customer base over any given year. Simple math says that if you can grow your customer base by 5% or 10% year-on-year, and you can cut your loss of customers by 90%, then your growth will look a lot better. Whereas now, companies are being forced to grow at 10% per annum or more just to cover their customer attrition,” he shares.
A lot of attention and budget is therefore being spent on creating a single view of customers and other customer-centricity efforts.
It’s one thing understanding the challenges your customers may feel, but the real test comes in crafting a solution which you know will work for them. Synatic’s iterative approach not only ensures great delivery, but actually provides the framework to help nurture innovation.
“We steer away from drawn-out 12-, 18- and 24-month projects. We have seen how effective our iterative approach is, and when it comes to integrating and automating data in your business, it should be treated as a journey. If you see innovation as a destination at which you’ve arrived, then fundamentally you are no longer innovative. We walk alongside our customers, ensuring that they are comfortable with the work and the new way of doing things. The great thing about this is that it not only lowers the risk involved in an implementation, but it gives our customers the time to identify opportunities to improve and grow. The iterative approach creates a space in which innovation can thrive, but it doesn’t mean that your delivery is slow.”
Nothing showcases the efficacy of a solution more than seeing it put through its paces in the real world. When Synatic was called in to help non-bank lender, Lendistry, deliver on the US government led Restaurant Relief Fund program in 2020, the teams were put through their paces.
Lendistry joined the delivery team just one week before the program’s launch, tasked with rapidly building a solution to manage the data from countless applicants within a few days.
On a recommendation by project partner, Strategic Growth, Lendistry chose Synatic as their Hybrid Integration solution partner, counting on their agile and multifaceted Hybrid Integration Platform.
The Restaurant Relief Program was a unique project where Synatic, Strategic Growth, and Lendistry all partnered to deliver a multifaceted solution in under 10 days.
“We built this delivery off the basis of an already fantastic relationship with Strategic Growth. But there is nothing like being in the trenches, knowing that struggling business owners and their families are relying on you, to really solidify meaningful relationships and partnerships. This project is an example of how important relationships are, especially when you are facing intense delivery pressure,” Peers explains.
One of Synatic’s standout features is its low-code / no-code environment. While this is sometimes new for IT teams used to writing code for everything, Peers shares that this feature can be a real win for nurturing creativity.
“While the low -code / no -code feature can sometimes be met with a bit of suspicion from traditional IT teams, our intention is to augment and improve the delivery cycles. By allowing your business teams to easily use the software, you are removing the time consuming back and forth email thread between Synatic’s IT support and your IT team to fix issues. This allows your IT teams to get creative and quickly begin solving challenges that need their attention by using easily built workflows instead of heavy and rigid coding.”
Peers ends by sharing that one of the ways he is able to get customer buy-in when it comes to choosing the right partner, is they can see the authenticity of his message.
“Synatic understands that customer attrition is expensive. We invest in long-term partnerships with our customers because we know that this is the smartest way to run and grow a business. We live the values that we are helping our customers achieve and so it’s easy for them to see that by choosing to work with us they will be getting a superior technical solution, but also that elusive, unquantifiable edge that comes with a great, long-term partnership.”
If you want to learn more about how Synatic can help you continuously innovate, alleviate the data challenges your business faces, and build empowering relationships, contact Synatic today!
