Companies with high interoperability also face these challenges. But what sets them apart is their ability to cope with obstacles by finding alignment across the business, acting early and making difficult decisions as needed. They build and reinforce technology integration with purposeful collaboration—intrinsic to employees’ work life. And most importantly, they back up their diverse application stacks with the right business strategy. One that is conscious of the organization’s full universe of applications and vendor selection style and recognizes the limitations of the IT team. Consider these two successful energy companies, each with high interoperability across their applications, but with different approaches tailored to their application buying preferences.