Integration Solved One Problem, and Created Another

If you zoom out and look at the last 40 years of enterprise technology, you can see a very clear pattern: every generation of tooling solved one bottleneck and unintentionally created the next.

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) was one of those breakthroughs. For the first time, manufacturers, retailers, logistics providers, and suppliers could exchange purchase orders, invoices, delivery notices, and confirmations using a shared format. It was predictable, reliable and compliant. In many industries, it still is.

Then came iPaaS (Integration Platforms as a Service), the cloud native answer to a world that had become overwhelmingly fragmented. Instead of brittle point to point connections and hand written scripts, companies suddenly had drag and drop workflows, pre-built connectors, API (Application Programming Interface) orchestrations, and real time data pipelines.

On paper, enterprise architecture started to look cleaner: EDI to handle structured B2B transactions, iPaaS to glue cloud tools and ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning) together, and APIs everywhere in between.

But for all this elegance, something fundamental stayed broken.

Integration technologies transformed how data moved, but not how work moved.

A JSON payload that arrives perfectly at its destination still doesn’t explain why it moved or what should happen next. A neat transformation flow inside your iPaaS doesn’t tell you what action should follow. And a validated EDI message doesn’t reveal what the customer actually wants.

Enterprises solved the “transmission” problem, but they didn’t solve the “understanding” problem.

And that is exactly the gap where work still slows down today.

The Context Gap: Why Smart Systems Still Depend on Humans

Real operational work doesn’t begin with a structured schema. It begins with something messy, human, and ambiguous: a message.

A supplier writes a quick update saying a shipment will be late. A customer sends a long email combining frustration, urgency, and a contract reference in one paragraph. A colleague forwards a complaint without context. A vendor pushes a status update but omits a key detail.

To a human, each of these messages is instantly understood. To an integration layer, they are just strings of text.

EDI and iPaaS do exactly what they are designed to do. They move those messages to the right system, enforce structure, and trigger predefined flows. But they cannot interpret whether a shipment delay requires a revised ETA, a partial refund, or a proactive customer update. They cannot detect sentiment, infer urgency, or understand intent. They cannot decide if the right next step is to update SAP, notify an account manager, or escalate to customer service.

So companies still rely on humans to sit in Outlook, shared inboxes, and ticketing systems, manually reading, classifying, forwarding, labelling, summarizing, or copying information between tools. This invisible work appears every day in processes like shared inbox management, email to case intake, or AI powered case classification.

In other words, integration moves messages. Humans still move the meaning.

And that is what Agentic Process Automation is built to change.

Agentic Process Automation Adds What EDI and iPaaS Cannot: Interpretation

Agentic Process Automation (APA) represents the next phase in enterprise automation, one where systems don’t just move information around but begin to understand the work behind it.

Powered by modern LLMs and agentic reasoning, APA doesn’t operate at the database or API level first. It starts where real work begins: at the inbox, ticket, PDF, or message that enters the organisation. Instead of waiting for humans to interpret what is inside, an APA agent reads it, interprets it, maps it to the right workflow, and coordinates actions across your existing systems.

Imagine a supplier emailing about a shipment delay. In most companies, that email sits in someone’s inbox until a human sees it, checks the order, updates Salesforce, notifies logistics, and eventually informs the customer.

With APA, that entire chain becomes autonomous.

The agent identifies the delay, checks the order in SAP through an existing integration like  Connect Outlook with SAP Automation, updates the case in Salesforce, notifies the right team, and even crafts a proactive customer update. All without rewriting your integrations or replacing your tools.

This is the core difference:

EDI and iPaaS move the data. APA moves the logic.

APA is not a replacement. It is interpretation layered on top of the infrastructure you already maintain, something explained clearly here.

Why Analysts Call This the Beginning of Adaptive Orchestration

Analysts have started describing this shift using new language.

Forrester calls it adaptive process orchestration: a convergence of integration, process application development, and AI agent management designed to achieve autonomous business outcomes. Gartner describes a transition from data flow to decision flow, pointing out that enterprises now need orchestration that responds to real world ambiguity, not just predefined triggers.

APA fits directly into this new model. Instead of acting like a pipe between systems, it acts like a coordinator, one that understands context, reasons about options, and takes action with intent.

It is the same philosophy behind Tekst’s approach to Process Intelligence: starting in the inbox to understand how work actually moves across teams and systems. That viewpoint is explored more deeply in this blog.

From Integration to Intention: The Modern Automation Stack

It is important to be clear: APA does not compete with EDI or iPaaS. It completes them.

EDI remains essential for structured, regulated, B2B document exchange, and Tekst even augments it with capabilities like automated Document (EDI) processing. iPaaS still handles system to system connectivity, transformations, and orchestrations, forming the backbone of modern IT. APA simply adds the layer that has been missing all along: the ability to understand the work, not just the data.

When combined, the stack looks like this:

EDI handles the rules. iPaaS handles the flow. APA handles the intention.

And the effect is immediate.

You see it in industries like Retail and FMCG, where promotions, pricing updates, and supplier communication create an endless stream of messages that require interpretation, not just routing. You see it in Manufacturing, where operational incidents, order changes, and production updates arrive in every format imaginable. You see it in companies like Securex, highlighted in our customer stories, where APA turns inbox chaos into structured, actionable workflows.

The pattern is consistent: once intent is understood from the start, inefficiency collapses downstream.

Why Tekst Built APA for the Inbox, Not the Database

Tekst’s APA platform was not built to automate databases. It was built to automate the work humans currently carry between systems.

That is why Tekst starts with the inbox. To read emails, PDFs, attachments, tickets, and messages.
That is why it enriches data with context before routing it anywhere. And that is why it can drive workflows like automatically processing orders straight from attachments in Automatic Order Intake, or dynamically prioritizing cases based on urgency and sentiment in Smart Case Prioritization, or resolving customer complaints end to end in Automated Complaint Handling.

Starting with human language gives APA a complete picture of the why behind each message, something integrations have always lacked.

Integration stays the backbone. APA becomes the brain.

The Future of Automation: Not Connected, Cognitive

The story ends the way it begins, with a simple observation.

Integration created connection. APA creates coordination.

Companies that combine EDI, iPaaS, and APA do more than move data across systems. They move work across teams, workflows, and outcomes. They turn static flows into self optimizing processes. They shift from reacting to anticipating. And they give employees back the time they used to spend interpreting and routing messages.

The future of automation will not be defined by how quickly data moves. It will be defined by how intelligently decisions move.

And that future is already taking shape across enterprise inboxes today.

Ready to explore APA for your enterprise stack?

See the full range of enterprise use cases or talk to Tekst to discover where an agentic layer could accelerate your operations.