The IT industry has become enormous and companies have transformed the way they handle and manage their data. Now, data integration is not done by using specific tools optimized to tackle particular data. But the organizations are deploying a lot of tools from different vendors to access and recover business intelligence spread across a number of databases and applications. As data integration plays an important role in fueling business growth, it is vital to understand the reasons to hire Data Integration Consultants to manage their data needs.
Merging of data flowing from different data sources is done to form it into meaningful and actionable insights that can be used for technical and business processes, this is known as data integration. Data integration is now considered as a significant approach to improve the accessibility, suitability, and quality of mission-critical data in an organization. Consultants help you through the complete implementation process, from understanding, selecting, implementing, cleansing, monitoring, transforming, to delivering consistently reliable data, and governed information in real-time.
What are the steps involved in a data integration project?
There are three steps involved in a data integration project:
i. Accessing Data
The data is accessed from all sources and places, whether it is available on-premises, provided by related partners, in the cloud or a mixture of both.
ii. Integrating Data
The accessed data is integrated so that information from one data source can be withdrawn into another. This sort of data preparation is necessary to make analytics or other applications able to utilize data successfully.
iii. Delivering Data
The integrated data is delivered to the business as and when it is required. Data can be delivered in batches, close to real-time or in real-time.
Why should you choose data integration for your business?
1. EASY AND FAST CONNECTIONS
Generally, building connections have been a hectic job that could take months. End-to-end manually coded integrations are not only prolonged but also unsafe. When you try to make more than three connections, it can be difficult to adjust them. Even applying small changes in one of the integrations can develop errors or a virus in the others.
In iPaas architecture of modern businesses, data access is easy and fast due to in-built adapters and connectors that can be imitated easily.
2. AVAILABILITY OF THE DATA
It is not easy to manage data siloes and batch processes. You must keep the existing data of all the right stakeholders in one place and it should be made available in real-time. That’s why it’s necessary to join all the data sources quickly to get the necessary information in a single location faster.
While it is enough for some industries to transfer data once or twice times a day, many industries are faster than that, and you must be able to make data available in real-time.
3. INTEGRATE DATA FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES
In an organization, you use a number of applications, systems, and data warehouses. As long as these data sources are distinct and siloed, it is hard to make existing data meaningful. For better cooperation, it is important to join all the dissimilar data sources with one another to make out the value of insights. When the right information is made available on a single location in real-time for all the stakeholders, you can utilize the information to improve the processes and provide superior customer service.
So, here is the need for data integration becomes very important. Generally, B2B integrations are very complicated and need integration experts to manage data. Sometimes, hundreds of data sources need to be integrated. The thing that is more difficult is that some data sources are on-premise and others are in the cloud, so there can be several firewalls, protocols, and data formats.
With an efficient data integration tool under the assistance of the right consultant will help you combine all data sources proficiently.
4. BETTER INSIGHTS BRING IMPROVEMENTS
Once you get the all data in one place, you can finally make use of the available information. You can utilize the raw information, or your data analysts can formulate insights from the existing information. Whether you can use these insights or some data tools that need to be deployed on the information and the result will be positive. There will be better intelligence on your processes and customers and you can make better decisions according to the available data and directly improve your processes.
Generally, there is a hidden value in every sort of data. The businesses that realize it early and unlock the unseen information in the data can considerably take advantage as compared to other competitions.
5. BETTER COLLABORATION
When you need to make internal collaboration better with your trading associates, you can only make this possible by integrating data. Fortunately, you can get amazing benefits of automating the flow of information on the way how you handle your business.
It’s critical to provide relevant data to significant stakeholders. This way, they can view better insights, and implementing data integration can automate a few processes that have been handled manually before. Whether you do internal or external integration, your employees and partners can make better collaborate, because they will get more information at their end.
Closing Words
As you are already aware, data is a valuable asset in any business, either you can make the most out of it by handling the data safely and securely or you may lose an important deal by disclosing important details. Therefore, it is vital to combine all data to form actionable and meaningful insights. More than these benefits, you get improved data quality that increases your competitiveness in the market.
Build a data integration strategy for your business and plan what measures you should take to improve the accessibility of data both in external and internal processes. The overall objective is to create more profit by utilizing the power of data. One of the most important parts of the business is attracting customers, so offering superior services than your competitors shouldn’t be ignored. If you are planning to strategize your business processes, contact Data Integration Consultants. ExistBI have experienced teams within the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.
