Data drives companies of all sizes. From mid-to-large-sized companies, IT leaders are reimagining their data strategies to manage information flowing in and out of a wide range of sources. This includes dozens, or even hundreds, of business apps used across the organization that produce large volumes of highly complex data. Finding a way to integrate those data streams across multiple applications quickly, easily, and securely will be a top priority for organizations looking to succeed.
Top-notch business leaders and IT professionals are aware of the large volumes of complex data that they need to analyze in order to make decisions and drive value, but many don’t have a comprehensive strategy to integrate it all, so they have no option but to rely on stopgap measures. To add insult to injury, three data integration myths or misconceptions hold companies back from leveraging information for generating value and revenue. Here’s how each myth impacts companies’ data integration capabilities and leads them astray.
1. Organizations need to build it themselves
Build vs buy is a perennial dilemma for IT departments. Almost all organizations have an in-house technical team that could be deployed to build a data integration platform from scratch. It involves writing long custom codes and creating extensive data mappings, which can take months or sometimes years. Investing so much time creating an integration solution for the business increases costs by leaps and bounds. Also, because the responsibility of building a data integration solution is entirely on IT, it becomes difficult for IT teams to focus on other priority projects.
All these problems can be resolved by buying a modern data integration platform from a reputable provider. Solutions like self-service data integration are changemakers indeed. These solutions enable non-technical business users to build data integrations and implement data connections in minutes while freeing IT to focus on more high-value tasks. So, companies need not wait for long for their IT teams to build the platform to implement business connections. Instead, they can buy a data integration platform and use it to manage their disparate data streams, thus improving the ease of doing business and accelerating revenue.
2. Business users can’t onboard and integrate data
In many business ecosystems, the onus of implementing onboarding and data connections is on IT. And for that, IT needs to write custom codes and create extensive mapping flows. Not only does that lay a burden on them, but also make the process slow and error-prone. Sometimes this process takes weeks or months of calendar time. Now, as IT is busy implementing data connections, it fails to focus on other strategic tasks.
When a company leverages a self-service-powered data integration platform, it can surpass these problems and drive its business forward. By enabling even non-technical users to implement connections, self-service integration relieves the extra burden laid on IT teams. With features such as pre-built application connectors, shared templates, dashboards and intuitive screens, AI-data mapping, etc., non-technical users can onboard and integrate multiple data streams – at speed and scale. At the same time, IT is freed to focus on more priority projects.
3. Onboarding is complex and time-consuming
Customer onboarding can take weeks or months when a company uses a traditional data integration platform. By leveraging a self-service-powered solution, it can be simplified and accelerated. In fact, users can onboard customers up to 80 percent faster, from months to minutes. When data is onboarded so quickly, it becomes easier for companies to build connections with customers. Ultimately, customers receive the value they’ve been promised sooner. And so they feel delighted and happy. Such happy customers are more likely to buy other products or services from the company, thus increasing upsell and revenue for the business.