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New data shows that business application volumes within organisations in Singapore have increased nearly 10% in the past year, surpassing 1,000 on average. However, less than 30% are integrated, creating data silos that lead to rising costs, duplicated work, productivity bottlenecks, and disconnected experiences.

MuleSoft’s annual Connectivity Benchmark Report surveyed 100 CIOs and IT decision-makers in Singapore to better understand these challenges and what organisations can do to succeed amid economic uncertainty.

Integration Challenges Slowing Digital Transformation Efforts 

Despite digital transformation advancements, 78% of respondents say integration challenges slow their efforts, causing infrastructure issues and major risks as IT budgets come under new scrutiny.

• Average app volume spikes. Organisations in Singapore are using an average of 1,064 different applications.
• Lack of integration is a rising challenge. Only 29% of these applications are currently integrated, creating data silos that lead to rising costs.
• Custom integration costs rise. Organisations spent on average USD $6.8 million on custom integration labour in the past 12 months.
• Siloed apps and data causing headaches. Forty-one percent of respondents say integrating siloed apps and data is their biggest digital transformation challenge.

The good news? New technology is solving these problems and making integration easier. Some of the world’s biggest companies are using real-time data technologies to integrate, ingest and store real-time data streams at massive scale, with built-in connectors that bring in data from every channel (mobile, web, APIs), legacy data through and historical data from proprietary data lakes.

API-Led Connectivity Helps Businesses Integrate Apps and Data

As organisations in Singapore become more digitally focused and cost-centered, they are using APIs to integrate apps and data to create exceptional customer experiences and generate revenue.

• Empowering non-technical business users accelerates transformation. Seventy-four percent have a mature strategy to empower non-technical users to easily integrate applications and data sources using APIs, demonstrating that low-code tools can improve business agility.
• APIs drive revenue as top-down API integration strategies increase. On average, organisations are generating 38% of revenue from APIs. Further, 81% of organisations now have a top-down API integration

With Rising Demands, IT Looks to Automation to Support Non-Tech Workflows

IT teams that manage an organisation’s tech operations are increasingly looking to automation for efficiency and organisation-wide productivity solutions. RPA, which enables teams to automate business processes and tasks with bots, is one automation technology seeing rapid adoption across enterprises, with 31% of organisations investing in the technology.

• Companies report broad automation, integration needs. Ninety-one percent of organisations in Singapore said at least one department within their company requires both integration and automation.
• IT continues to ‘own’ automation amid digital disruption. Developers (73%), IT operations (73%), and application administrators (55%) are most likely to be responsible for automating business processes.
• Non-tech roles eager for automation. Data science (71%), product (70%), business analysts (60%), customer support (61%), finance (60%), marketing (58%), engineering (64%) and HR (53%) report a need for automation in their departments.
• Reusable integrations offer cost saving opportunities. On average, 46% of organisations’ internal software assets and components are available to developers for reuse, an opportunity for greater integration efficiency.

Globally, businesses have saved up to 109 billion hours every month using automation tools that enable employees to focus on higher value work. By taking a unified approach to integration, API management, and automation, businesses are able to drive efficiency, agility, and continuous innovation.

As Digital Transformation Moves Ahead, Cost of Failure Rises

Despite an increase in IT project volume (40% growth year over year), most (76%) organisations in Singapore are ahead of schedule on digital transformation progress due, in part, to infrastructure improvement. However, the cost of failure to complete projects has risen, adding risk to businesses’ bottom lines.

• The IT delivery gap. Fifty-five percent of teams say they completed all of the IT projects asked of them last year. In addition, 30% of projects were not delivered on time.
• Infrastructure investments ease systems change. Just 41% of organisations now say it is difficult to make changes to a particular system or applications because of their IT infrastructure.
• Cost of failed digital transformation spikes. The average cost of failing to complete digital transformation initiatives now sits at USD $10.2 million annually.

“Amid uncertain economic conditions, Singapore businesses are still investing in digital transformation efforts to drive innovation and productivity, and increasingly, to accelerate ESG goals in an expanding green economy,” said Brian Kealey, Vice President and General Manager at MuleSoft APAC. “However, without the necessary integration and automation efforts, businesses cannot realise the full potential of the data and applications. Integration and automation tools help companies tap into valuable enterprise data and achieve innovation gains and long-term growth.”

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