Data Integration – Enabling Business Growth

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We live in an age when all that matters is Data.Whether it is a small company or a big enterprise, and whatever be the industry may it belong to, its success majorly depends upon the data and only data, which is requisite for timely decisions, so that further strategies can be made. Right from creating strategies to generating revenues and optimizing the strategies further, data plays a lead role. The more relevant is the data, the more informed will decisions be made.

According to a research by McKinsey, the companies that depend upon data for sales, make 5-6% more profit than the rest. Armed with powerful data, the businesses make more informed timely decisions without having to face a lot many challenges that otherwise come-up.

Of these challenges, the major ones are the speed at which the data is driven, and error that may be there in the data.

No matter how promising may the latest technologies be, unless the businesses have accessible data, they cannot implement them.

According to a research by Gartner, the impact of bad data on any organizations is $9.7 million per year. Another report says, IBM also reported that businesses lose $3.1 trillion every year in the US, due to bad data.

Data into Information, Information into Insight

To be able to run businesses on the path to growth, leveraging the best of data fetched in minimum time, and technological innovations, while taking all these challenges to task, all that is needed is Data Integration.

Data integration as the name says, is not just about integrating or combining all the data from multiple sources, but also ensures of its seamless accessibility, understandability, and minimum probability of errors.

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina, CEO, Hewlett Packard.

To unleash the complete potential of any data, it should be integrated. Understanding this, many companies that integrate their data reported of building concrete foundation that led to the doors opening to opportunities for growth.

Let’s dig deeper into the growth opportunities for businesses led by data integration.

Better Resource Planning

With multiple systems for handling various data pertaining to Human Resources, payroll systems, etc., the information stays scattered in the organization’s disparate information environments. In such a scenario, even the information exchange between these systems, becomes quite a task, as it requires manual data transfer and handling at various levels, causing a higher probability of error.

Well, to end all the miseries in such an organization, integrating all the data can be the wisest of solutions. The integration of systems automates solutions led by integrating the data, that regularly synchronizes for updates prevent a lot of possible errors. Along with complete anytime access to the data, it boosts the efficiency manifold, enabling the workforce achieve more productivity, leading the company to grow.

Improved Data Management & Streamlined Operations

No matter, how well does a business manage their data, at one point of time, the data grows to such large volumes, that the management of such data lakes becomes a struggle, especially while working on separate systems. By integrating this big data, the businesses can have their processes and operations streamlined.

The complete control, visibility, and access over the data helps the organization to view the complete statistics without even having to access different systems.

ELT Approach & Data Warehouses for Specific Goals

The most important component of any data integration strategy is ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load), an approach that calls for extracting the data from various sources first, followed by its processing to a consolidated format, and then loading it in a new format to the data warehouse.

Big businesses opt for data integration to create these warehouses, where they place the combined data obtained from different sources, for using it to generate reports, perform specific analyses, and to complete particular objectives much efficiently.

According to Global Market Insights, the data warehousing market size is expected to grow at over 12% CAGR between 2019 and 2025.

Some businesses opt for migrating their warehouse partially to the cloud while some do it completely. In such cases, they are required to go for cloud integration so that the data can be obtained from hybrid sources.

The ELT approach is being adopted by many organizations these days. Some are following it to achieve their specific goals while some implement this approach on a permanent basis.

Improved Business Associations & Partnerships

The organizations that have their workforce dug deep into managing data, entering data in the systems manually, are hardly able to manage tasks that are critical for business growth.

For any business to grow, managing customer relations and business associations is inevitable for growth. But owing to the stress caused by data handling, the executives find it really difficult to build relationships, and so are devoid of opportunities that spring up with such associations.

Data integration allows easy data shareability on multiple systems, and so frees these executives from the tedious task of data entry, and rather allows them to use this data for meaningful outcomes.

With accurate and sorted data in hand, they are able to present themselves to the customers and associate in a better and more confident way. The result? Increased reliability, more trust and strong relations.

Smarter Decision Making

Smarter Decision Making

The dependency upon the data manually entered in the systems, always leaves a lot of scope for errors, and to prevent such errors from happening, the organizations employ a team for admin tasks like sorting of such a data. They lose on some or the other resources both ways – on time, when they sort out the data, and on reliability when they don’t.

Well, the organizations can definitely save on both, if it integrates the data, so that the up-to-date data is made available right on their fingertips, for actionable insights and involvement in smart strategy creation, as well as decision making.

Competitive Advantage

Whatever be the industry any business may belong to – Finance, Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, or Food, to stay in the competition, it needs to adopt a data-driven approach for creating strategies. To be able to do that, they need to extract value from the data, and implement the booming Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies for future course of activities, based on that data.

Stringent Security

Stringent Security

Often the concerns are raised about data security, as the integration process makes the data easily accessible. It’s interesting to know that data integration is handled with secure data transfers between the modern integrated systems that are in synch. In fact, most of the data breach cases happen in traditional systems.

Data integration allows secure data flow; with quick access to the well-synchronized information or data anytime anywhere, organizations can have a clear view of everything, and that certainly makes it very easy to spot suspicious activities indicating at security issues, wherever in the system. So, the security of the systems and data is not challenged, and is rather enhanced by integrating the data.

Know about Why is Software Integration Getting Popular.

Points to Remember for Right Data Integration Strategy

Data integration requires the businesses to create a strategy based on their specific vision and goals. No specific strategy can work for all. They certainly need to assess themselves to have a complete clarity of their own specifications like:

  • Their expectations from the integration strategy, and of course, their aspirations.
  • The targeted benefits they want to leverage, for growth in the industry they belong to.
  • The status of the need – short-term or long-term; a temporary objective or a permanent one.
  • Integration of new with the old system, or a completely transformed modern system.
  • Involvement of emerging technologies for tangible improvements in the business.
  • The value-add to the business.
  • The capability of available resources to carry and maintain the integration process.

Once the above aspects of business requirements are analyzed, a holistic approach to integration strategy will be adopted, which will be aimed at procuring, integrating, and transforming the data into a valuable asset for the organization.

Integration Services by Tarika Technologies

Data Integration provides businesses of all sizes and industry, a bunch of growth opportunities by extracting the value from the existing data and transforming it into a valuable asset. Keeping the focus on their vision, the businesses can step into a new dimension of growth.

Tarika Technologies offers custom integration services to help businesses walk out of their legacy systems and get the best of emerging technologies for opportunities to grow.

Staff Reporter
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