As IT professionals and business professionals often maintain, data integration is one of the most immediate processes by which any business may grow into a flourishing powerhouse of productivity. Data integration is the process by which a business might move data from certain sources into tables within data warehouses. Combining information from many sources into one primary view, data integration offers clear displays of relationships among data and ensures that these displays can be accessed by any employee, regardless of department.
In the context of data integration, a database can be anything from a preexisting warehouse to a third-party tool with which to examine and make sense of data. Tools like dashboards are considered databases because without business intelligence tools of any kind, one would not be able to draw any material conclusions from data warehouses or tables. As long as data has moved from siloed sources into a singular display of central information, data integration has elevated a business to modern standards.
The original purpose of developing modern data integration technologies was to help modern businesses meet the demands of the modern age. Not only does growth happen very quickly in the modern world, but the caprices of the modern world are also myriad. Extremely good events and extremely bad events are both likely to occur at any time, so manual integration and management must be avoided at all costs. Like many facets of the digital age, data integration interfaces depend on APIs, databases that divide data into categories as tables divide data into columns. After all, as far as most query languages are concerned, a database is nothing more than a series of data tables at its most complex. As involved a process as data integration is, you might ask, “What is the point?”
Data integration is what allows modern businesses to grow faster than others. It is a means by which to have a chance at competing against other businesses that enjoy equally explosive growth. Whether a business collects data or not, that business’s future comes down to decision-making. A business that collects data without refining data into meaningful decisions may be no match for a business that fails to collect data while somehow making excellent and prescient decisions, but generally, collecting data will make the process of using data to make decisions much easier.
Which Precise Items Make Data Integration Important?
The inherent benefits of relying on data integration often make themselves clear to users fairly immediately. With data integration, users can accomplish more with less time because they are outsourcing menial work to third-party tools like dashboards. Data integration offers businesses a solid foundation with which to guarantee confidence as well as tangible growth.
Competition
Skimping on data integration is passable at first. It is only when a business’s size increases significantly that data integration becomes unequivocally necessary. Addressing up to thousands of customers a day, many businesses need to make a huge positive impression to bring those customers back for more. Data integration can streamline this central B2C process and catapult a business accordingly. Data integration means being able to view customers’ data in such a way as to learn more about those customers, thereby bringing competition to other businesses and inviting other businesses to step up their game.
Better Decisions
Decisions are the main benefit of data integration. Without resulting in actual decisions, data integration is nothing more than an expenditure of resources, time, and energy. Failing to implement data integration often leaves departments’ hands tied with administrative tasks such that those departments are unable to focus on other things. Because data integration can offer information down to the last minute, working almost exclusively in real-time, we know that data integration can help anybody run a business that has to make difficult decisions daily.
Cost Effectiveness
Without data integration, businesses may use one third-party tool to manage many different things, including accounting, order tracking, and inventory tracking. Sometimes, third-party tools can be overextended if a business fails to implement data integration, so ensuring that third-party tools go to their best possible use is what data integration can also offer. Using third-party tools without data integration creates security vulnerabilities, hidden expenses (like multiple licenses), and other difficulties. Data integration allows for third-party tools to do more work for you while requiring less work from you.
ROI
The streamlined decision-making process for which data integration allows naturally increases a business’s ROI. Businesses can leverage data integration to seize opportunities for explosive growth. Data integration shows businesses the way in which information can catapult businesses into more profitable futures. Increasing sales and maintaining customers, data integration achieves an unrivaled ROI that competes well against less prescient businesses. From saving energy to advancing ROI, data integration has something to offer any business.
