How big business can integrate data seamlessly

Modern businesses must do well to take advantage of the availability of big data at every opportunity. However, this also means that identifying the right model for data flows for business intelligence is crucial when it comes time to put the information available to its best use. Fortunately, there are many ways to accomplish this endeavor, and plenty of infrastructures and services to support companies’ efforts to introduce practical measures to interpret and leverage data.

Data integration refers to the process of combining data gathered from multiple sources, including third party entities and platforms, to create a unified database of information. This can be a significant and overwhelming process, and it’s rife with opportunities for things to get a bit muddied up in the process.

Ultimately, in order for data to serve its best purpose, to be available in a format that can be analysed in multiple ways for varying purpose, and for it to be easily accessible for anyone within your organization who has reason to participate with the information, all data gathered must end up in the same place and in (at least) a similar format.

If your data is coming from multiple external sources, then it’s likely that the data you will be bringing in will require its own unique form of extraction, and will likely arrive to you in completely different formats. This is the challenge of integration, but by unifying all data points with a single, commonly-used script, your organization faces the best prospect of creating a usable and beneficial database.

Data integration is just the first practical step toward creating an overall business intelligence model, but it’s the most crucial as it lays the groundwork for what will become a successful leveraging of big data in a digitized world.