From June 25-26, Thru participated in MuleSoft® CONNECT in San Francisco. We had the opportunity to meet with a number of integration professionals and demonstrated the ins and outs of Thru Managed File Transfer (MFT) Connector for MuleSoft. We also spoke with enterprise architects and solution engineers from some of the largest corporations in North America.
The following are five takeaways we gleaned from these conversations:
1. Companies Want to Move Faster and More Efficiently
The need for faster and more efficient business processes was a recurring theme at the event. Prominent IT and business leaders consistently hammered home the fact that creating better digital experiences for customers, partners and employees first requires having the right IT infrastructure in place. Outdated integration technology that relies on custom coding or scripting was a common challenge cited that hinders meeting the goal of becoming an agile enterprise.
A perfect example of this was highlighted in the CONNECT keynote by Frank Libero, former CIO at McDonald’s. He spoke about how McDonald’s faced a tough challenge to improve its customers’ experience amidst a digital revolution and the rising popularity of fast-casual and food delivery competitors. With restaurant visitors on the decline, McDonald’s realized it desperately needed to create a better digital experience and provide the quick home delivery its customers desired. To make this goal a reality, the company updated its integration technology to an “API- first” approach rather than using a solution that required custom coding. With this new API infrastructure, the company added digital kiosks to many stores and also launched a new mobile experience that integrates with Uber Eats and WeChat in a third of the time it would have taken using their legacy platform.
2. Reusable Integrations Improve Business Process Efficiency
The power to reuse integrations across multiple business process applications is highly valuable to companies. It reduces development time, improves the delivery and standardization of integrations and frees up valuable development resources for use on more strategic projects. In speaking with multiple CONNECT attendees, we learned that many integration leaders have complex networks of file transfer integrations with external partners and internal organizations and are looking for a way to better manage these endpoints without having to painstakingly recreate the same connections over and over.
The Thru Platform and MFT Connector for MuleSoft solve the challenges of custom coding file transfer integrations by enabling companies to create unlimited, reusable file transfer endpoints which can be instantly plugged into MuleSoft integration flows.
3. Retail Organizations Seek to Modernize File Transfer Processes
Many of the attendees who visited Thru’s booth were from some the world’s largest retail businesses and expressed their company’s need for modernizing their file transfer processes. Most retail companies have heavy file exchange processes like EDI transactions that require a high level of security, tracking and integration into backend systems. The Thru Platform is able to modernize file transfer management for retail organizations by providing a centralized solution for companies to create file transfer processes with no coding and the added benefit of integrating into multiple backend systems with Thru MFT Connector for MuleSoft.
4. Scalable and Flexible Integration is Vital to Keep Up with Growth
Scalable and flexible integration was a common need we heard at the event. We spoke with attendees who expressed the need to modernize their infrastructure and transition away from their legacy on-premises file transfer systems to cloud-based solutions, such as Thru’s platform, that could instantly scale as their file transfer needs change and ensure flexible, loosely-coupled integration with multiple internal and external endpoints.
One of the guest speakers, Michael Gonella, CTO of Salesforce, told an interesting story of how MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform™ helped the company handle the fast growth of its employee onboarding and recruitment processes. He explained how Salesforce used MuleSoft to quickly connect systems to Workday, its SaaS HR management system. He said these integrations created “seamless experiences for people joining the company, ensuring they were set up for success from day one.”
5. API Infrastructure Transforms Government Services
The final takeaway is how APIs are being used by government agencies to improve citizen experiences. The State of Colorado discussed their use of APIs to transform their benefits management system, enabling citizens applying for state benefits to determine eligibility within minutes instead of weeks. Delivering massive digital transformations like this has propelled the State of Colorado to be a respected innovator in digital government services.
Discover More About Thru MFT Connector for MuleSoft
If we missed you at MuleSoft CONNECT and you are interested in learning more about Thru’s born-in-the-cloud managed file transfer solution and MuleSoft Anypoint connector, please go to our MFT Connector for MuleSoft page or schedule time for an online demo.
Learn more about the Thru MFT Connector for MuleSoft.
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