Solving IT collaboration drag: 1Bonding now available in SA

Paul Field, Professional services manager at CASA Software. (Image: Supplied)

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Collaboration drag refers to the friction, delays and errors that happen when IT teams must manually move information between platforms. It’s an invisible bottleneck that 1Bonding, now available in South Africa through CASA Software, solves.

CASA Software was recently appointed sole distributor and reseller of 1Bonding for the sub-Saharan Africa region.

Paul Field, Professional services manager at CASA Software, says collaboration drag is a growing challenge in organisations managing multiple platforms – either internally, or connected with clients, partners and vendors. “We come across many customers with multiple service management platforms; for example, they may need to capture the same information across these systems, often using a manual ‘swivel chair’ approach, in which they must copy and paste the same information from one system to another. This is time-consuming, prone to error and potentially also a security risk.”

Field says: “When they encounter the problem, many organisations just bomb ahead in manual swivel chair mode until a point where they realise that it's costing them too much. Then one of the things that they often jump into is point-to-point integrations – building a very specific integration to talk to another system and vice versa. These are very bespoke and can be time-consuming and costly. Another challenge is that if they add another system or the systems are upgraded, the complexity increases.”

Ilse Wocke, CASA product specialist for 1Bonding, adds that these manual interventions slow processes down and negatively impact SLAs, bidirectional communication and feedback to clients and customers. “There are broken workflows between systems that should be talking to each other. Organisations need solutions that enable collaboration in IT with an integration layer that eliminates manual handoffs, data silos, and client confusion,” she says.

1Bonding, a SaaS solution now in South Africa through CASA, brings a fresh approach to integrating multiple systems. Wocke says: “1Bonding is a cross-company and cross-system integration platform automating the exchange of service requests with partners to ensure standardised collaboration while maintaining data privacy control.”

The value propositions are compelling: 1Bonding enables low-code, no-code configuration, a cost-effective, extensible platform and simpler, faster ITSM.

Built around security from the ground up, 1Bonding eliminates lengthy access request processes when initiating a secure ticket exchange. To exchange tickets with another company, organisations simply invite them to join the 1Bonding SaaS service, and each 1Bonding subscriber configures their service desk connection and has full control over what data is shared and with whom. On the 1Bonding platform, any pair of companies can enter into an agreement to exchange tickets, forming a 'bond', and organisations control which tickets and requests are shared. Any service desk can be integrated in just hours, instead of weeks, and all transactions are recorded in an audit trail.

“1Bonding is priced within reach of the mid-size market and offers rapid time to value. So, we’re seeing a great deal of excitement about it in the local market and are already running POVs for local customers,” Field says. “When we demonstrate the technology stack, user interfaces and ease of use, customers really see the benefits 1Bonding can offer them,” Field concludes.