What is Data Integration? How Can It Help Your Business?

Business organizations use data every day to make decisions. This data can be coming from multiple sources. Sometimes the data is from spreadsheets, sometimes the CRM software, and sometimes sensors of IoT devices.

All this data is of value when aggregated and observed. However, the problem that most companies face is that they are unable to use this data because extracting, transforming, and loading it into a data warehouse is expensive and time taking process.

So, most of this data goes to waste and business heads are unable to make strategies that can help them improve their business processes.

An approach that is changing this dynamic is called data integration. Consider it as a way of combining data from multiple sources on a single platform. This information is unique, filtered, transformed, compatible, and error-free.

Now, companies can use this information through OLAP to make business decisions that can help them move the profit needle upward.

What is Data Integration?

Data integration is the process of consolidating data at a single place usually a data warehouse or a data mart. This information can be from hundreds of data marts or data lakes.

Usually, data software is used to extract, transform, and load the data from the source to the destination. This data transformation process of loading the data after conversion to the destination is called as the ETL process.

Why Is Data Integration Important?

Data integration is no longer a business process. It is a business strategy that helps businesses make improvements, fix broken processes, and get ahead of the competition.

Gartner estimates that by the end of 2020, data integration will consume half the price of building a digital platform.

“The treasure at the end of the rainbow is the ability to make data-driven decisions.”

You must be wondering, why data has become so important? A few decades ago, data was only important to scientists who want to detect anomalies, make discoveries, and find new successful experiments.

However, all this is now done in companies. Every enterprise has a Research and Development (RnD) department that offers all the business projections, cost cuttings, and process integrations.

Challenges of Data Integration

1. Data is not compatible with the data warehouse.
2. Data is not up-to-date.
3. Duplicate data available.
4. Data is corrupted or unorganized.
5. Conflicting data systems such as legacy and modern systems.
6. The data format is incompatible.

How Data Integration Software Can Help?

A decent data software offers multiple features such as data profiling, data validation, and data migration. It comes with a staging area where data can be cleaned, organized, filtered, and transformed. Finally, this data is ready to be loaded in the data warehouse.

The best part about these data integration software is that they can be easily connected to multiple data marts and legacy systems through customized connectors. Take AsteraCenterprise. It offers all the connectors that you would need to connect with over 40 data management applications.

AsteraCenterprise can also help you with the following:

• Cloud service integration
• application-to-application integration
• Business-to-business integration
• Mobile application integration
• IoT integration

Since most companies are now moving their data to the cloud, the need for data integration software is more important than ever!

With decent data software, you can easily move your data from on-premise to the cloud.

Also Read: What Job Can I Pursue With Six Sigma Certification

Data Integration Benefits All

Business decisions impact the business bottom-line. This in turn affects everyone linked to that business. So, it is important that the right type of data is moved from the data marts to the data warehouse so that companies can take the right decision at the right time.

But to get started with data-driven decision making, you would need a robust data integration strategy, and a quality data solution to do that job for you.

Need help with your data integration strategy? Get in touch with us today!