Why Data Integration Is Integral to Successful Enterprises
As enterprises look to make the most of their data, they should consider the benefits that data integration can bring to their business, especially as more organizations undergo digital transformation.
As companies have adopted more digital resources to power their business, there’s been a corresponding rise in the amount of data they need to manage. Worldwide organizations generate around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. As digital tools become a larger part of the fabric of our workplaces—especially with the rise of the cloud—companies are faced with the challenge of keeping up with the increased amount of data they’re generating. A business may adopt a range of apps and software that generate data, which is typically stored separately—making it more challenging to harness the information to improve business operations. That’s where data integration comes in.
Data integration gives companies more power to leverage the data they create and ensure it’s free of errors or duplication. The rise of business apps and other digital tools, along with the evolution of on-premises to cloud data storage, has made data integration essential for enterprises in a number of ways.
One of the most visible benefits of data integration is accessibility. By uniting all of their data into one source, it’s easier for companies to efficiently tap into the information. Being able to access data more readily is key to unlocking other benefits of data integration and eliminates the amount of labor with having to piece together data from multiple sources.
Data integration also simplifies tracking. With all data compiled together, organizations have a better overall view of where things stand throughout a business process. For example, through data integration, a company can see how a customer is progressing through a sales funnel and what actions they’re taking along the way. Without data integration, information about a customer’s behavior could be confined to the marketing email platform, the user information database, and ad platforms that the company uses with user acquisition.
Similar to tracking, data integration enables better reporting practices for enterprises. Instead of going to different sources to access and gather data, it allows IT teams to streamline their reporting needs since they can run reports and grab what they need through a singular place. Data integration also improves reporting by giving a more comprehensive view across all apps, software, and systems.
Overall, data integration is a powerful resource for putting a company’s information at leaders’ fingertips—helping them make more intelligent, informed decisions, improve their agility, and the ability to identify areas of success or improvement in ways that weren’t previously possible or easy to access.
