Finger on the Pulse is a new series where we explore the major trends shaping business technology. In each post, you’ll learn from our key partners and their perspective on an industry trend through the lens of their unique business. You can explore the last post, Tailor-fit tech: Improving internal workflows, to dive deeper into employee experience. For this interview, the focus is navigating a disruptive business environment.
How to achieve proactivity in a disruptive business environment with FusionRM and MuleSoft
Has disruption become another facet of “business as usual” for your company? Did the chain of events stemming from COVID-19 prevent you from delivering your products or services to customers? Between the speed of digital innovation upping the ante for competition and unforeseen volatility in the global supply chain, you’re likely all too familiar with the influx of disruption in today’s business ecosystem.
Is your organization ready to tackle future obstacles in your operating environment? To continually meet the needs of customers in light of this disruptive ecosystem, companies need to be ready to act when things go sideways. But there’s a complex web of factors at play: external and internal influences, processes, systems, partners, and people – all of which make it difficult to strategize for disruption.
Find out how Fusion Risk Management and MuleSoft can help keep your business up-and-running in the face of adversity in this interview with Paula Fontana, Fusion’s Vice President of Product Marketing. We discuss how Fusion and MuleSoft help teams navigate an increasingly disruptive business environment.
Tell us a little bit about the relationship between Fusion, MuleSoft, and Salesforce. How did this partnership come to be, and what opportunities does it open?
Fusion and Salesforce have been longtime partners because our solution is built on top of the Salesforce Platform. And our standing as a Summit Partner is a great example of how successful our alliance has been over the years.
Our partnership with MuleSoft came to fruition in 2020 due to growing integration demands from Fusion’s customer base. It’s no longer enough for companies to operate risk registries out of spreadsheets once a quarter. We’re living in a dynamic environment that requires a real-time perspective of your operating ecosystem and how it impacts the important products and services you deliver to your customers.
Now, our clients have the real-time insights they need to be aware of the ever-changing risk topology while navigating the disruptive environment. Fusion uses MuleSoft to combine data situated all around the business with regulatory intelligence and situational insights, giving customers a unified perspective of the health of their business operations and operating ecosystem. They can then make more informed decisions, respond to crises swiftly, and mitigate risk strategically to build a more resilient organization.
What do MuleSoft and Fusion bring to the market that’s different from other options?
Partnering with MuleSoft means our customers have an unparalleled foundation of prebuilt connectors, integration tools, and capabilities. With the solution’s open framework, our customers are empowered to make configurations and build pieces to fit the evolving needs of their organization.
Fusion offers a single-pane view into the actual complexity of the business environment, unlocking siloed data and integrating systems from around the enterprise to map the links and dependencies that make business operations run smoothly. MuleSoft is the catalyst for unifying that data and connecting the dots.
When customers approach you for support in navigating disruption, what are some main challenges they’re facing? How do MuleSoft and Fusion empower them to address those challenges?
Our customers come to us because their methods for navigating disruption and risk aren’t fit for the current pace of business. When situations change by the minute, annual or quarterly risk assessments don’t cut it.
Their biggest obstacle in accelerating their response to disruption is unlocking real-time data. They need actionable insights to tap into a 360-degree view of their product and service value chain, but their systems aren’t powerful enough for that. With MuleSoft and Fusion unlocking and unifying data, teams can respond to disruption as the situation evolves.
Additionally, gathering data in one place allows for pattern identification and predictions that recognize red flags before things go awry. It all goes back to shifting from a reactive to a proactive culture. Proactivity is the antidote for disruption.
For example, a client who’s a top 25 globally ranked manufacturer lost an essential vendor due to a catastrophic fire, impacting several mission-critical services. The client used Fusion to understand the role of the critical vendor in their value chain and quickly identify a suitable alternative, saving the organization $235M in losses.
Fusion, MuleSoft, and Salesforce each hold customer success in high regard. How do they come together for the sake of the customer?
Fusion and MuleSoft are both committed to helping companies deliver on their customer promises, irrespective of the circumstances. Together, they help clients gain the comprehensive operational visibility they need to prioritize services and products that are most important to their customers, understand the end-to-end value chain of how these important services and products are delivered, and proactively build the muscle memory that helps their teams overcome whatever disruption comes their way.
Data integration is what helps bring the idea of Salesforce Customer 360 into the fold of Fusion. By aggregating data from across the enterprise in a single place, our clients have the intel they need to anticipate headwinds that would otherwise block their ability to meet customer expectations. With a proactive approach to risk management, clients spend less time putting out fires and more time delighting customers.
MuleSoft data integration paves the way for automation within Fusion. In your experience, what does automation via integration enable teams to achieve?
Before MuleSoft, clients relied heavily on their IT and development teams to build custom integrations between Fusion and the systems that stored their data. Now, the process of integrating that data is far more automatic. Stakeholders outside of the IT team can build customizations and workflows without code, thanks to the rich automation tools made possible by the union of MuleSoft and Salesforce.
This gives business teams the power to tailor the solution to their needs while freeing up time for the IT team to support other impactful initiatives.
It’s impossible to talk about disruption without addressing security. How do MuleSoft and Fusion help teams create more secure, resilient operations?
Automation takes security one step further. Customers rely on Fusion to house highly confidential internal data that needs to be carefully governed and controlled. Automatic integration via MuleSoft adds an extra layer of protection to help reduce the potential of confidential information ending up in the wrong hands.
If we’re looking at security in a broader sense, Fusion acts like a surveillance and alarm system for nearly every aspect of an organization’s operations. With an all-encompassing view of how different pieces fit together, you can identify threats and vulnerabilities across your entire business. With Fusion and MuleSoft, everybody on your team has the power to manage risk and navigate disruption.
If you’d like to learn more about Fusion, check out the Fusion Framework System in AppExchange and the MuleSoft Anypoint Exchange.
