What is data integration and why does it matter - PerfectionGeeks
Every business generates tons and tons of data each day. Many businesses use hundreds of applications and several systems on-premise to store their enterprise data. Data is a key component of today's business success.
Even though businesses produce huge amounts of data each second, this data is useless if it's not properly managed and integrated. It is possible to accumulate a lot of data and make it difficult to manage. Data integration is the solution.
This is a key component of data governance. Enterprises are increasingly utilizing data integration because of the need to quickly share data.
Data integration typically involves a few elements. These include a master server, a network, and users who access data from the master servers. This one data set allows businesses and departments to make better decisions, provide a better customer experience, and coordinate their work.
Let's now get to the point: Data integration is the next big thing in enterprise technology.
What's data integration?
Data integration refers to the process of combining data sources into one unified view. The ingestion process is the first step. ETL (extract, transform, and load) uses the ETL approach to integrate data from multiple sources into one unified view. Data integration allows analytic tools and data to create actionable, effective industry intelligence.
Customer data integration, for example, involves the extraction of customer information from different business systems like sales, marketing, accounts, and others, and then combining it into one view of the customer that can be used to report, analyze and provide customer service.
Data integration allows you to consolidate any type of data, structured or unstructured. It can be used to do everything, from simple querying of inventory databases to advanced predictive analytics.
We now know what data integration is, so let's dive into the benefits of data integration for your business.
Why data integration is important?
Big data integration is in constant demand.
Data integration Techniques are essential for reducing tedious data manipulation, whether an organization wants to combine databases with partners or government departments want to eliminate data silos among departments.
Here are some benefits of data integration for your business.
1. It increases efficiency and saves you time. When companies integrate data integration techniques into their business processes, it drastically reduces the time required to prepare and analyze that data. Automating unified views eliminates the need to gather data manually.
These tasks save time that can be used to improve productivity and competition in an organization.
2. Reducing errors: It's difficult to keep track of all the company's data resources. Employees must be able to identify every account and location they may need to manually collect the data. To ensure that their data is accurate and complete, employees must also install the required software. If an employee adds a data repository, but they are not aware of it, they will have an incomplete database.
Data integration allows your employees to have instant access to the most current and accurate data, whenever they need it. Data integration also makes it easier to do manual data manipulation and reduces the chance of errors.
3. Data integration facilitates smarter business decisions. It allows for transparent business processes within an enterprise. Data integration systems allow businesses to access data from different systems and use it in any way they want. This makes it possible to clearly understand the data. This allows them to make quick and intelligent decisions about business processes.
4. Collaboration is improved: All employees, even those located in different physical locations, need to have access to company data for them to collaborate on business projects. Employees in nearly every department are improving their skills and creating data that is useful to the rest of the business.
Integrating data allows everyone to have a single view of all data across the organization. This allows for greater collaboration and unification within the company.
5. More valuable data is delivered: The data integration process increases the business's data's value over time. Data integration into a central repository system identifies quality issues and implements improvements. This results in more accurate data, which is the foundation for quality analysis.
Data integration
Big data integration is required when data comes in from both internal and external sources. This can be achieved with different data integration techniques depending on the complexity, disparity, and volume of the data source.
Let's look at the various types of data integration and how they can improve business intelligence processes.
1. Data consolidation
Data consolidation is the process of combining data from various sources to create one central data repository. This central repository can then be used for data analysis and reporting.
Data latency is a key difference between data consolidation and other data integration methods. Data latency can be defined as the time it takes to retrieve data from multiple sources and transfer it to the data store.
The latency period is shorter which means that fresher data can be available for analysis in the data store.
This latency will vary depending on which technologies are used to integrate data and what your business needs are. With the advancements in data technology, it's possible to consolidate data, and transfer changes to destination in real-time, or near real-time.
2. Data propagation
Applications are used to transfer data from one place to another using an event-driven approach. Data propagation can be done using enterprise data replication (EDR), and enterprise application integration. EDR is used more often to transfer data between databases. EAI, however, can be used for business transaction processing between systems.
3. Data federation is a technique that consolidates data from multiple sources.
The virtual database is then used by users as a single source for all data within the organization.
This technique uses data abstraction to create a uniform user interface that allows data retrieval and access. The result is that every time an application or user queries the virtual database, the query is sent directly to the relevant data source.
This means that the data is available on-demand in the data federation.
4. Data warehousing is a type of data integration that uses a common storage space to store, format, and cleanse data
This technique copies data from all apps within an organization to the data warehouse. Data analysts can query it from this location.
Analysts don't need to worry about the impact on the performance of the software or app by querying data in the warehouse.
Data analysts can view all data from one central location. This allows them to verify data's consistency and accuracy.
5. Middleware data Integration
Middleware data is the use of a middleware application to integrate source systems with a central repository. The middleware validates data before it is sent to the repository. This could be a cloud-based data warehouse or a database.
Data Integration uses real-world cases
The first step in unlocking your data's true potential is to integrate it. It is possible to access the most important and accurate information within a company's data if all of it is in one place. A majority of industries use data integration software, including retail, healthcare, telecommunications, and retail. This is how these industries gain a competitive edge.
These are real-life examples of data integration that demonstrate how this technique can be used to benefit businesses across different industries and sectors.
1. Healthcare
Patients need to be treated with the utmost care. Patient data was previously scattered across multiple systems, which eventually led to poor care. Hospitals have begun to integrate as much information as possible into one comprehensive record, thanks to data integration. This has led to improved patient outcomes, better health, and lower costs.
2. Retail
Every day, retailers deal with a lot of data. Their performance tracking is dependent on having all relevant data at their fingertips. Data integration allows retailers to seamlessly manage inventory, sales, and other important metrics across all their outlets and channels.
3. Finance
Financial industry has begun to embrace data integration for fraud prevention, detection, credit risk measurement, cross-sell/upsell opportunities, and retention of valuable customers.
4. Data Analytics Solutions
Data Analytics Solutions is also important in marketing. This involves communicating messages to the correct audience at the right time. Marketing campaigns that aren't well-executed can quickly go south.
Without the right tools and channels for data integration, managing information about thousands of or possibly millions of consumers is difficult. This could result in disappointing campaigns and a waste of marketing budgets. It is essential to integrate data to keep it organized and up-to-date.
5. Telecommunications
Customer service is a key component of telecommunications. Data integration is essential. The 360-degree view of customer and company relationships can be gained by integrating data from multiple sources. Problems that lead to lower customer satisfaction or more customer service requests can easily be identified and fixed.
Summary
Data is everywhere, and it's growing at an ever-faster rate than ever before. To successfully understand our customers, people, and the world around us, organizations must have a data integration strategy. Organizational decisions that are not based on this understanding, through acquisition and integration of data, and successful use of the data can lead to organizational inconsistencies. This could result in an organization being out of touch with its customers, suppliers, and employees. All organizations need data and analytics to support them.
