It’s conventional wisdom that data and application integration results in better business. When systems are connected, organizations are more responsive to customer needs, more innovative, more efficient and more profitable.

But how much better? A new study by Dell Boomi, based on a survey of 400 information technology decision-makers in the United States conducted by the research firm Vanson Bourne, provides answers.

Released at the Boomi World 2017 conference, “The Connected Business” report quantifies how organizations with successful integration strategies realize millions of dollars in cost savings and new revenue from efficiency and productivity boosts, while businesses with poor integration practices suffer higher costs, process delays, sluggish responsiveness, and missed opportunities.

Organizations Rapidly Building Out Integration Capabilities

The survey highlights that a strong majority of organizations have integration on the fast track. Respondents say that the level of connectivity across their businesses will reach 78 percent by 2020, up from 41 percent in 2014 and 62 percent today.

Most notably, cloud-native integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is the tool of choice — especially amid rapid deployment of best-of-breed applications in hybrid IT environments.

Among organizations today using at lease one integration tool, 94 percent will have iPaaS deployed within the next 12 months — comprised of 43 percent using iPaaS today, 43 percent in the process of adopting iPaaS, and 8 percent planning to adopt iPaaS in the next year.

That sort of rapid adoption of iPaaS mirrors what we’re seeing at Boomi. The majority of businesses are selecting iPaaS, rather than on-premise ETL processes or ESB middleware that is typically overly complex and not suited for integrating today’s native-cloud applications and services.

Integration Driving Cost Savings, Revenue Growth

As organizations use integration to build connected businesses, the survey shows that dividends multiply. Nearly one-quarter (73 percent) of respondents say productivity is improved. Others cite better data accessibility (68 percent), more efficient workflows (57 percent), increased profitability (54 percent), better responsiveness to customer needs (50 percent) and faster, more accurate decision-making (48 percent).

Those improvements translate into bottom-line cost savings. Respondent organizations using at least one integration tool have netted average savings of $3.26 million from deploying integration technologies, the study finds. Those savings are even greater when organizations use iPaaS, which helps IT teams connect systems across businesses far faster and more easily than custom-coding or using traditional middleware.

And integration drives top-line revenue. Respondents estimated that as connected businesses, they could expect revenue to grow 11 percent a year. That averages out to $544 million in new yearly revenue across the respondent pool, which includes a sizable number of Fortune 1000 companies.

Poor Integration Limiting Growth and Opportunities

For every benefit of successful integration, there’s a drawback to poor integration.

Most significantly, 87 percent of organizations in the survey have suffered from failing to establish a strong integration strategy. More than two-thirds (67 percent) say they have missed business opportunities in the past year because of poor integration — leaving money on the table because they couldn’t connect effectively, either internally among employees or with partners and customers.

A sizable 59 percent go so far as to characterize integration as the “Achilles heel” for their companies. Nearly half (49 percent) say that poor integration is holding their organizations back. In addition:

• 81 percent say the right integration tool would greatly improve organizational performance
• 64 percent are still struggling with legacy middleware
• 43 percent say poor integration has cost them money in lost efficiency
• 40 percent cannot build simple, let alone sophisticated, integrations

As we’re seeing this week at Boomi World, organizations are aggressively tackling those issues by utilizing iPaaS to modernize their IT infrastructures and drive digital transformation initiatives. To learn more, download the “The Connected Business” report.