Data integration is the art of systematically combining data from multiple sources to create meaningful information — it allows you to produce actionable insights and valuable business intelligence that can help drive revenue and improve front-end and back-end processes, like user experience and operations.
Integrating data from between CRM and ERP systems, (like Salesforce and NetSuite, for instance) often reveals vital information about sales, revenue, and customer experience. With a CRM handling the customer interactions and an ERP managing accounting processes on the back end, connecting the two will draw important insights that will help teams working on both sides do their jobs easier.
In this post, we’ve compiled a list of four data integration trends that businesses should incorporate into their strategy in order to improve overall business health, taken from leading experts and drawn from our own experience with data integration.
Automation
IT teams spend over a third of their time on integration projects, and in recent years, there has been added pressure on organizations to enhance connectivity between systems, applications, and data. Although integration-related costs run high, averaging in at about $3.6 million per year — the cost of a mistake from manual entry is almost always higher. With the vast amounts of data and systems that store it, businesses should err on the side of caution when it comes to manual integration. Implementing automation into your data integration process will help avoid costly mistakes, add greater efficiency and help improve things like analytics and compliance concerns.
Cloud applications and APIs
The rise of cloud-based systems is astronomical — in the last year and a half, businesses have changed the way they work drastically, and it has become a necessity to keep applications connected without the need for a physical data warehouse. According to the 2021 Connectivity report from MuleSoft, the average organization runs about 800 different applications, but only less than a third (29%) of apps are currently integrated. And as this shift to cloud-based applications occurs, organizations will need an integration strategy that works across multiple environments — whether that be integrating data used by disparate systems, between public or private clouds, or between cloud-based and legacy systems.
A current trend we’re seeing is the use of APIs among organizations. The report shows that most organizations (96%) use APIs, with most using them to build integrations and deliver new projects. If you’re new to APIs, the best example would be between your device and cloud software. The cloud software interacts with your server to store the data you want it to. In other words, it integrates with the data from your device.
Metadata Management
Metadata is the core of your business information — simply put, it’s data about data. As data volume grows, metadata management becomes critical to producing valuable business intelligence and strategies. Effectively managing your metadata means leveraging your metadata to help understand and sort your data for various uses, and can help a business track any issues related to the quality of the information you’re migrating. Before doing any sort of integration project, you need to understand the data you’re looking to move, which is where metadata and metadata management comes in. For cloud-based solutions with massive data lakes, metadata plays a crucial role in decoding data and producing critical business insight — understanding how your CRM is customized helps you better understand the data within it, making for better decision-making and a more agile business.
To learn how Strongpoint can help effectively manage your metadata in Salesforce, click here.
Real-time Integrations
In order for a business to thrive, it must have accurate information about its customers and inventory that can be strategically acted upon. But with the rise of cloud technology, businesses usually gather information from hundreds of applications, making it difficult to have one unified view of this information. Unless these data sources are integrated, businesses end up with silos of data that don’t bring much value to their processes. Having the ability to integrate data as it is produced enables rapid decision-making, breaks down data silos, and will help move your business forward as it grows.
The benefits of data integration are endless — with proper integration, businesses can increase their competitiveness, increase their customer relationships, and improve their decision-making. Now that you have a better idea of what integration trends to keep an eye out for, you’ll be able to make smarter business decisions about what type of integration technology is best for your business needs. As you can imagine, the need for data migration and analysis has never been greater. Get ahead of the competition today — and reach out to Breadwinner to learn more about how they can help deliver on the complexities of a Salesforce and NetSuite integration.
About Strongpoint
Strongpoint, now part of Netwrix is a fully native toolkit that automates the hardest, most time-consuming parts of SOX compliance, change management, access review, and configuration management in NetSuite and Salesforce. Trusted by pre-IPO and public companies, Strongpoint eliminates up to 90% of the workaround audit prep and enables ERP and CRM teams to manage risk and complexity without compromising the pace of change. Learn more about our tools for NetSuite and Salesforce.
To learn more about integrating Salesforce with your NetSuite account, book a personalized demo with our team here.