Sitting at the very heart of digital transformation, accessing, harnessing and interpreting data at every level of a business is the key not only to maximizing profits but also to long-term, sustainable growth. But this transformation brings with it a set of challenges which, once overcome, open up a whole new way of working.

Data streams into an organization from all corners of the business: from finance to marketing, sales to HR. But this provides only limited value if viewed as discrete silos. To unlock the full potential in business data —it needs to be integrated. This results to insight that can be achieved from views of specific applications to a detailed overview of interrelated processes across business functions.

iDA automates data integration, giving you game changing insights while removing the cost of manual labor

Data Integration for Business Intelligence

When a business has integrated data, the ’cause and effect’ — of the impact one area of a business makes on another — can be observed. Achieving this level of understanding provides a platform from which businesses can make continuous improvements to processes, products and services. Integrating data in to a central hub for analysis — via Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics tools — also significantly helps data security and governance efforts. But it brings with it several inherent challenges.

No two businesses’ data is the same. As companies grow, so does their IT infrastructure. For example, instead of every office of a company using the latest version of a single vendor’s ERP software, they might have some offices using an online platform such as NetSuite with others using separate instances of an old version of Microsoft Dynamics.

Integrating Data from Multiple Sources

Dealing with disparate types of data — be it multiple ERP, CRM or HR systems, perhaps — as well as where and how they are located are key considerations of data integration. There might also be another, parallel consideration, that of bespoke systems that have been customized to meet specific business needs. If an ERP system was customized to suite a particular company’s processes ten years ago — and if that company’s business model has remained relatively static — then that ERP software is likely to still be in place.

Given all these considerations, it’s clear that the task of data integration should not be taken lightly. And, given its complexities, it’s certainly not a task that should be undertaken with ad-hoc manual labor. Manual data integration is often inefficient and leads to inaccurate results. It is also extremely difficult to enforce data security and governance.

iDA can connect, collect and unify business data, integrating it into a secure, governed hub and preparing it for expert analysis. Working with an array of apps and data sources, we tackles the challenges of data silos and manual preparation head on.