Business Intelligence Lowdown: Data integration is critical for the successful implementation of enterprise level applications

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July 02, 2005

Data integration is critical for the successful implementation of enterprise level applications

"Master data management" is the art of managing information exchange, such as customer and product information, between different computer systems. It is very difficult for large companies to maintain multiple sets of master data. Moreover, enterprises have more than one ERP or CRM system, which is different from the other. It is difficult to manage data across these systems, track their path, and maintain accuracy across the master databases. Inconsistency in corporate data can lead to duplication of efforts and difficulty in analyzing business performance. Having a centralized master database facilitates developing marketing strategies more rapidly or pushing for more sales via the web. Product numbers, names, brands, formulations, etc all constitute information that can be very difficult to utilize if it is not easily accessible. Very often, companies have a range of products that are almost similar and can be grouped as one but lack of insight into product specifications prevents companies from integrating their product database. Having data that responds to an optimum number of definitions can be a great time saving device. Businessintelligence reports:

Application software vendors, always quick to spot a revenue opportunity, have recently sniffed that there may be money in this area, so a range of “master data,” “data hub,” and other products have been running off the presses of their slick marketing departments.

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July 2, 2005 in Data Integration | Permalink