Data management is crucial for businesses of all sizes and in all industries because it helps ensure the security, accuracy, and accessibility of data, which is vital for making good decisions and efficient business operations.

However, the data every company depends on to operate and, in some instances, differentiate becomes fragmented and disconnected across their ERP, recruiting and onboarding, CRM, and marketing automations, resulting in a backlog of things the business wants to do but can’t. The world lacks enough technologists to help support the growing dependence businesses have on data.

But don’t sweat it — TeamCentral has got you covered. TeamCentral focuses on optimizing productivity through improvements in how data is managed and governed across business systems. Team Central helps connect the people, processes, and data that run your business, automate thousands of hours out of your daily operations, and scale your business with personalized assistance for all employees.

CIO Bulletin sat down with Andy Park, the Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder of TeamCentral, to have a conversation on how the company is delivering outstanding process automation to its mid-market clients. The following are excerpts taken from the interview.

Q. How did the concept of creating a company like Team Central come about? What industry problems does it solve? 

We launched Team Central to help our mid-market clients with their internal data management and process automation needs. Many were experiencing tremendous growth at the time or going through a digital transformation initiative. Our research into modern system integration and data management solutions led us to a mix of low/no code “citizen developer” solutions like Zapier and enterprise grade solutions like Informatica and MuleSoft. What we discovered was that the citizen developer solutions looked pretty but really could not handle the heavy lifting associated with the complex data use cases we were solving. The enterprise solutions could do most everything we needed but were just too expensive and required deeper technical expertise.

We set out to create a platform aligned to a developer's software development lifecycle (SDLC) mindset that could facilitate designing and building more complex solutions using low/no code principles while also keeping the overall cost of ownership down. The result — a low cost, enterprise-grade data management platform that enables a larger group of less technical people to take on more of their own data synchronization and workflow automation needs.

While we are industry agnostic, most of our clients tend to be in manufacturing, construction, engineering, transportation, logistics, and telecommunications because they all share a common trait: legacy systems with heavy tech debt and massive amounts of siloed data.

Q. What are the company’s vision and mission? How does it help set itself apart from its competitors? 

Our purpose in life is to help companies simplify how data moves and is managed across systems through intelligent automation to eliminate “Data Chaos!”  

Our no-code Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) called “Central” virtually eliminates redundant and non-value-add business activities, reduces data processing costs, and mitigates the risk typically associated with fragile point-to-point data integrations.

Most of our clients have limited technical resources and budgets for integration, automation, and data quality management, so it’s our job to make their lives easier with cost effective solutions. Think of TeamCentral as an extension of your technical team, and Central as a Citizen Developer friendly platform with enterprise scale. Connect…Automate…Grow is our motto, and we’re here to help your business be more productive without having to find the resources or take on expensive, complex, and highly risky integrations.

This is just the starting point for TeamCentral. System integration and data management are the foundation, but there are even greater automation opportunities we are pursuing. We aim to enhance the automation features of Central iPaaS by creating virtual extensions of your work teams. Our vision is for a world where every information worker receives personalized assistance to automate their daily tasks. This allows them to prioritize the important areas that make their business unique. Our Virtual Assistants with Semantic AI are not meant to replace human jobs. Instead, they enhance the abilities of information workers, making them more productive and efficient.

Q. What are the different products Team Central offers? Can you elaborate on ‘Central Platform’ and how it functions as the business’s nervous system? 

TeamCentral currently offers our no-code Central Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) hosted in Azure, as well as over 30 pre-built connectors for familiar software like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle NetSuite, HubSpot, Shopify, UKG Ulti-Pro, and Payload, among others. 

The platform is a data messaging engine built on commercially available Azure services that either receives, transmits, or both system transaction events between the applications in near real time, with data lineage and integration performance monitoring. With Central iPaaS as the hub of data activity between systems, the event driven design of the platform, and plug-and-play connectors, we can manage data across multiple core business systems simultaneously and in near real time. 

Q. As a company with a mission to simplify how data moves, how does Team Central manage data across systems? 

Central’s Event Driven Architecture is based on a hub-and-spoke integration model. We have built connectors for a variety of software applications and other data sources using APIs, webhooks, and other file based techniques. These connectors “listen” for changes in data as system transactions occur and then communicate back and forth with the Central hub using our messaging engine that contains referential metadata. Think of connectors as templatized data endpoints that can filter and transform data according to business rules that govern how processes are automated.  Multiple connectors surround the Central hub, all interacting simultaneously with the hub and propagating data out to any other connector that has been configured to subscribe to that data feed. 

It is simple, efficient, flexible, highly scalable, and reliable.  Best of all, it is relatively inexpensive to implement and maintain because there is NO CODE required.

Q. What are some of the unique qualities of Team Central’s ‘Virtual Assistant’? How does it increase CRM value? 

Our Virtual Assitant “Ah-Ha!”  actually accesses data from ERP, CRM, eCommerce, HRIS, marketing, ePayments, and EDI, among other paid research and open web data sources, not just CRM. And Central is built to handle bi-directional data feeds behind the scenes. Those two unique features make Ah-Ha! very different from other co-pilot solutions on the market.

There are two primary components to our AI enabled Ah-Ha! Virtual Assistant: a proactive feature we refer to as our “Newsfeed” and a more reactive natural language global search capability. The Newsfeed constantly listens for relevant business events and trends and surfaces them to subscribers through a mobile responsive interface, or they can be distributed through text messages and e-mail. We are preparing to roll out a new beta version of this platform in Q2, 2024.

The Ah-Ha!’s global search feature leverages Semantic AI to scour over vectorized data from private, paid subscription, and open data sources, perform fine-tuned multidimensional analysis over these data sets, and return answers to even the most complex questions pertaining to business activity, business performance, and competitive analysis. The release date of this new app is scheduled for the end of Q3, 2024. 

Q. What are some of Team Central’s future plans? How does the company plan to continue leading in the industry?

Over the next two years, TeamCentral plans to continue to enhance the Central no-code integration platform's user experience, self-service capabilities, and auto-provisioning capabilities. We will also be expanding our strategic SaaS partnerships and embedded integration. In parallel, we will be building the most advanced AI Driven work assistant on the market that includes personalized features such as enterprise search, knowledge discovery, and task automation – Ah-Ha!

Enabling mid-market companies to organize their data and put it to use

Andy Park is the Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder of TeamCentral. He is responsible for driving the growth of the company through commercialization of their iPaaS product called Central, as well as making sure that all customers and business partners are successful and delighted by TeamCentral’s team and solutions. 

For over 25 years Andy has been advising companies on how to best leverage people, process and technology to drive maximum business performance. Prior to joining TeamCentral, he was in various advisory, growth and delivery leadership roles at Centric Consulting and Accenture.

Over the course of his career, he has been heavily involved leading philanthropic causes, teaching MBA and MSIS students on trending tech and actively participating on business advisory boards.  Andy has a Master’s in Engineering from the University of Cincinnati.

“Central is a solution that simplifies the most complex data synchronization and workflow needs across eCommerce, ERP, CRM and HRIS systems — minimal to no coding required.”