With companies increasingly having to store and access large amounts of data, managing it effectively has become difficult. This holds true for companies that have data spread across various systems, held in separate locations. Enterprise data integration is a way of unifying these disparate data sets in a single location. The “enterprise” classification infers that the systems are more complex and expansive than standard data integration processes.

Why is it important?

With organisations that have a continuous requirement of collecting data, their priority lies in finding a solution to bring together large quantities of data effectively. The following are some of the key reasons for why enterprise data integration is important:

Cloud and on-premise inconsistencies
Many organisations have their systems and data both in the cloud and on-premises, leading to a hybrid cloud solution. Connecting such systems is not straightforward especially as cloud solutions are typically newer and may not work well with legacy on-premise solutions.

Manual processes
Automation is a key feature in assisting organisations in handling mass sets of data. For those that don’t have automation or intelligence capabilities, manual processes are a hindrance and blocker with a large amount of time and resources wasted.

Siloed data
As mentioned above, data is being spread across different systems and platforms making it difficult to easily locate and access it when needed. Data may also be held in non-standard formats making it impossible to make sense of.

Technical difficulties
A traditional IT department will not be equipped with the right tools or knowledge to perform enterprise data integration due to the complexity of the challenges. Purpose-built enterprise data integration tools will be necessary to manage existing integrations and to streamline the process.

Regulations
With compliance becoming an increasing factor in data privacy, companies have to proactively ensure they are adhering to regulations set around the world, including EU’s GDPR laws and CCPA. Enterprise data integration helps to ensure systems become and stay compliant across all regulations.

Benefits of enterprise data integration

Increased productivity
Free up the resources and time wasted on manual processes and focus on business critical tasks. Achieve better and faster output from your teams.

Greater visibility
Unify your data and get an overview in a single location, leading to empowered business decisions for stakeholders.

Faster time to value
Accelerate integration and share synchronised insights across teams. Derive key points of actions from data quickly and effectively.

Future planning
With centralised data comes better reporting capabilities, leading to successful decision making. With new data sources continuously being added, your system will ensure no data sets are siloed ever again.