What Is Data Integration? Why Is It Important For Your Business?

 

Businesses can operate efficiently and can achieve more when they employ data strategically. In the current world, there are numerous forms and sources of data like CRMs, mobile apps, ERPs, etc., which makes assembling and making use of the information extremely difficult. So, using a data integration platform becomes important.

For years, businesses depended on data warehouses with particular schemas for a specific application or use in the business. For example, marketing teams would use data to understand a particular campaign’s success in a better way, project the quantity and types of content they would need in the future, or obtain a clearer view of a buyer’s journey.

However, whenever the team wanted to add new data sets for more source material and greater context, it needed a lengthy manual process. First, they would have to define requirements, then acquire new data, and finally, build new procedures manually to update data warehouse while making sure that their updated schema did not damage existing code.

Fortunately, the data integration platform enables the businesses to gather, sort, and transform unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data from almost all the sources into one place. Doing so enables the teams in a company to improve performance measurement, gain actionable intelligence and deeper insights, and make informed decisions for supporting organizational objectives. The primary function of a data integration platform is to merge as well as centralize data for easy management, access, and business intelligence.

Importance of Data Integration

Many businesses believe that if they do not embrace Big Data, they would become non competitive or irrelevant over time. Without data integration, using Big Data for operating more efficiently, increasing revenues, and cutting costs means finding ways to analyze, aggregate, as well as mobilize data to the optimum extent of its value.

Data integration works in an organization to support types and any number of queries from the highest overarching concepts to the smallest questions. Data integration can be administered to numerous specific use cases that affect every department and team in your business, like –

  • Data Quality – Traditionally, ensuring the quality of data had been challenging because it meant determining what data requirements are upfront, the methodology to create them, as well as the tolerance level for errors your business had. However, if you use a data integration platform, most of the risk regarding complying with the data governance policies of your business is eliminated and this increases both the value and accuracy of information available to the teams in your company.
  • Data Enrichment – Through data integration, you can combat data decay easily by constantly updating names, emails, and phone numbers. You can also combine these with particular pieces of unique data about each customer to make a more accurate and richer picture of your business’s buying audience.
  • Business Intelligence – BI (business intelligence) covers everything from predictive analytics to reporting to finance, management, and operations. Further, it relies on information from all over your business to uncover gaps in process, missed revenue opportunities, inefficiencies, etc. Data integration offers the BI technologies and tools your business is already utilizing with data streams your teams require to make their next specific decisions.
  • Real-Time Information Delivery – Companies cannot wait for several days to crunch numbers as they have a few hours and at times, only several minutes. That is why the delivery of real-time information becomes critical for any business so that it can quickly adapt to the customer, market, vendor, and compliance and regulatory changes. Data integration lets you sample data from anywhere in the collection procedure at any time to obtain real-time insight into workloads, interactions, and processes.
  • Customer Data Analytics – If a business knows who its customers are, what their behaviors exhibit, and whether they are likely to stay loyal to the business, it can prove to be of paramount importance. Data integration lets you pull together information from your complete individual customer profiles into a single view. From there, you may see the present overall trends and supplement your current customer retention strategies with real-world insights.

Conclusion

The above-mentioned benefits of adapting data integration tools shows why data integration has become important. Companies should use a reliable data integration platform to simplify the process of integration and make it more accurate.

Data Integration Platform
Data integration platform