Optimizing Business Capabilities with a Data Integration Software
Businesses are increasingly adopting a data-driven culture. The significant surge in the volume of the exchanged data indicates that the trend is creating a paradigm shift — a shift from manufacturing to an information economy. To put this in perspective, Google processes petabyte of information by the hour and The Economist recently declared data as the most valuable resource, even more than the oil.
“The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.” -The Economist
But the true utility of any resource comes from its consumption or the value it delivers to the consumers. The same principle applies to data. To gain maximum utility out of data, businesses must be able to (quickly and reliably) integrate incoming data from disparate sources and make that information available to the relevant stakeholders, both internally and externally. Your business needs a data integration tool to perform this task efficiently.
A data integration tool can help you in following ways to optimize your current business capabilities:
By extracting data from structured and unstructured sources
Incoming data can be structured, semi-structured, poly-structured or unstructured. For instance, text-based PDF files, PDF forms and scanned PDF images are used as a medium for exchanging information by many organizations. But the data contained in PDF files is unstructured and is required to be extracted for crucial business decisions. A data integration tool can automate the data extraction process and integrate the extracted data with the internal systems for further processing and analysis.
By integrating data from hierarchical files
Integrating data from flat files is comparatively easier but business users face challenges when they try to extract, parse and integrate information from hierarchical data files such as XML, JSON, EDI and COBOL. To perform hierarchical data integration, business users rely on IT, which increases the burden on them. A data integration tool can effectively bridge this gap between business executives and IT.
Learn how Astera Centerprise enables business users to work with hierarchical data, without the need for custom coding and programming, by downloading the whitepaper Hierarchical Data Integration for Business Users.
By making data readily available to business users
A data integration tool with a user-friendly interface and a comprehensive library of built-in functions can help limit the reliance on IT. It readily makes the data available to business users who can then work with the available information and get business insights without delay. Additionally, data integration tools can automate the ETL process, which eliminates the need for manual integration and significantly reduces the chances of errors.
The performance of a business is optimized when the executives are more focused on making critical business decisions rather than collecting and integrating the data.
By checking for data quality
A data integration tool cleanses, validates, and ensures the trustworthiness of the incoming data. Poor quality data can adversely affect business insights that can prove to be expensive for the business.
Overall, a data integration tool that simplifies the ETL process for the users is an investment that organizations should make to stay relevant in the current data driven business environment. It can prove to be beneficial for the business in more than one ways. By bridging the gap between IT and business executives, it helps in efficient division of workload. It empowers business users to drive insights from the data by giving them prompt access to it. And when executives delegate the task of data integration and extraction to software, they can focus on more critical aspects of the business. The result is faster and more accurate business decisions, minimized costs and increased revenue.
Astera Centerprise is a complete data integration solution that provides the mentioned benefits to its users, and more. The user-friendly interface and visual drag-and-drop environment eliminates the need for manual scripting and enables business users to work with data without relying on IT. Contact Astera’s sales and support to get more information.
Originally published at https://www.astera.com on March 21, 2018.
