The primary dilemma posed by enterprise data integration is made explicit by the phrase itself. Organizations across the world, by nature, are flooded with data that are often fragmented, distributed, and residing in different environments or formats. Consolidating this diverse data to make it more accessible and valuable is emerging as a fundamental priority across business ecosystems.
Not long ago, this massive undertaking was an obstacle for the majority of companies. It consumed time and all sorts of resources. But fortunately, the introduction of modern technologies such as self-service data integration platforms has immensely reduced the stress and strain inherent to driving such initiatives.
Here’s how companies are solving the challenges of enterprise data integration today:
Enterprise Data Integration: Challenges and Solutions
Circumstances and situations vary across a different set of industries and organizations, of course, but there are some of the most common problems encountered by large-scale data integration initiatives.
Here are some problems and potential solutions:
Challenge 1: Increased volumes of disconnected, fragmented, diverse data sources and types
It’s evident that data can exist in sorts of formats, sources, locations, and across different environments. Common scenarios include a business that’s making attempts to consolidate multiple procurement systems, or efforts to merge a wide range of customer databases. Many smaller problems bring difficulty in performing these tasks, including the deduplication and cleansing of data to facilitate better quality during the process.
Solution: Self-service data integration solutions can easily and quickly handle these situations. They empower non-technical business users to consolidate different types of data from myriad sources much more quickly than ever. Users can rely on pre-built connectors, shared templates, dashboards and intuitive screens, and AI-data mapping to build data integrations rapidly and easily.
Challenge 2: Tasks such as large-scale data integration can be an enormous strain on IT teams
More often than not, resources are always stretched thin in a majority of enterprises. That’s especially true when it comes to technical experts. There is an immense scarcity of available personnel who can reliably deal with the needs of a data integration project. Also, the work itself is tedious and repetitive as there is a need to create custom codes and perform extensive data mappings.
Solution: The best thing about self-service data integration solutions is that they’re accessible to non-technical business users. These solutions give power to business users by providing intuitive user interfaces with drag-and-drop functionality. Features like reusable components and pre-built integration processes reduce or even do away with the need for manual coding. By the time business users run integration-related operations, IT can pay attention to driving other strategic tasks.
Challenge 3: Data integration at this scale can take weeks or months of calendar time
Because customers’ expectations have shifted in the digital age, speed has become even more essential for enterprises and businesses of all kinds. Companies that rely on conventional data integration solutions take six to 12 weeks of calendar time to perform data integration steps. At the same time, customers are forced to wait, which causes a great deal of stress and frustration for them. And that is certainly not good for the health of the business.
Solution: Self-service data integration empowers businesses to implement data integrations much more quickly – in days or hours. Now when business workers are able to connect with customers sooner, they can address the needs and requirements of those customers and deliver accordingly. This delights customers to the core, and often times they feel inspired to buy more products or services from the company.
Challenge 4: Managing security and compliance could become harder
Organizations tend to confront a wide range of inherent compliance challenges. That can be because their businesses often span different geographies and jurisdictions. To meet regulatory needs, companies need to have a robust data integration platform in the first place. Apart from compliance, companies also have to face security-related issues. This means that data thefts and breaches can happen, again not good for the company’s health.
Solution: Self-service data integration solution places data security and compliance as a high priority. The end-to-end encrypted environment, transparency, record-keeping, and accountability established through self-service-powered enterprise data integration empower companies to be in a better position to understand and align with data governance rules and regulations as they continue to evolve globally.