Business Intelligence Lowdown

Data Integration Platform

A new data integration platform, Active Integration Platform (AIP), is now available from data and application integration vendor Sunopsis. AIP is a comprehensive set of products that take care of a variety of data and application integration needs. It incorporates three modules __ the Sunopsis Data Conductor that can manage a high volume of data integration requirements for data warehousing, BI, BPM, and data migration operations, the Sunopsis Event Conductor that can handle asynchronous application integration needs in event-driven architectures, and the Sunopsis Data Conductor that can perform all the necessary transformations in a database. Database Trends and Applications reports:

The Active Integration Platform is built around a persistent data and event database--the Active Integration Hub (AIH)--captures the superset of all data and business events contained in all systems linked by the Active Integration Platform. The two major features in V4.1 of the Active Integration Platform allow users to automate the processes required to create and deploy the Active Integration Hub. The Common Format Designer (CFD) is used to quickly design and create a data structure (data model) for the AIH.

Informatica Extends Reach

Data integration solutions provider Informatica has tied up the European IT company Bull to establish a reseller, support and integration network spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The partnership includes exchange of technology to port Informatica's PowerCenter and PowerExchange Itanium 2 suites into Bull's NovaScale server family. Data Warehouse Knowledge Base reports:

Combining PowerCenter and PowerExchange functionality with the power of Bull's NovaScale and Escala servers is expected to extend data integration, migration and synchronisation and datawarehouse population for organisations.

Re-branded Data Integration Platform

Similarity Systems' data quality software Athanor and data profiling tool Axio will be integrated into newer versions of Informatica Corporation's PowerCenter data integration platform in the near future. Maintenance releases of PowerCenter in April this year will incorporate Athanor's data cleansing, rules definition and quality metrics monitoring capabilities, and data discovery tool Axio's data asset structuring and cataloguing capabilities, to enhance content coverage, performance and platform support. Computer Wire reports:

Both maintenance releases are being rolled out to coincide with the official launch of PowerCenter 8 (codenamed Zeus) this April, which Girish Pancha, executive vice president of products for Informatica said will radically improve data quality rules definition, data profiling and reporting capabilities for business users.

Business Objects Buys Data Quality Provider

Business Objects SA has moved closer to providing its customers with data quality management solutions along with its data integration software. The business intelligence software provider has signed a deal to acquire data quality software vendor Firtstlogic Inc. for US$69 million. IT World reports:

Business Objects said that it expects the acquisition to make it more competitive because customers are looking to standardize on a single platform that can deliver a complete information management tool.

Customer Data Integration

Effective data management is not that easily achieved, according to a Forrest Research report which states that even though 92% of companies surveyed believe that a consolidated and integrated view of customer data is vital to the success of an organization, only 2% of them have managed to successfully deploy what is known as customer data integration.

Customer data integration (CDI) is defined as the process of consolidating and managing customer information from all available sources. Customer contact details, customer valuation data, and information garnered through various interactions with customers are structured and organized to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the customer database.

This aspect makes CDI a key element of customer relationship management. It is a business necessity these days to clean, manage, process, and maintain customer data because CDI projects, though technically complex, can deliver meaningful customer data to the entire organization.

New Data Integration Platform

Siperian Hub XT is the latest data integration platform to hit the market. The multi-product platform comes from the stables of the award-winning master data integration and management software provider Siperian Inc., and promises to facilitate firms in creating and delivering precise, unified views of customers and related locations, products and assets in a real-time operational environment. Data Warehouse Knowledge Base reports:

With Siperian Hub XT, customers can create more efficient and profitable customer relationships, increase the accuracy of regulatory compliance efforts and achieve better insights into the complete customer relationship all while reducing traditional operational costs.

Record Throughput Achieved

DataMirror Integration Suite has achieved a throughput of more than 2 billion transactions per hour on IBM’s eServer i5 systems, which is higher than the performance of any other similar solution. The data integration suite from the DataMirror Corporation was tested in October last year at the IBM Benchmarking Center in Rochester, Minnesota. Business Integration reports:

DataMirror Integration Suite achieved 2.06 billion transactions per hour and replicated nearly one trillion bytes of real customer data per hour on IBM’s 32-processor eServer i5 595 server. 

Oakwood deploys data integration BI platform

Oakwood Worldwide, the Los Angeles-based global corporate housing and property management firm, has successfully deployed Informatica Corporation's PowerCenter data integration platform to gradually migrate from a legacy mainframe system, while implementing new real-time tools like Business Intelligence (BI) and dashboards.  With the new platform in place and the PowerExchange mainframe access software, data sharing is enabled between the legacy systems and the newer applications like inventory-management and integrated corporate client systems, thus serving Oakwood's data management needs. Oakwood realized that the transition had to be done in incremental steps to minimize confusion and chaos, and so, chose a non-intrusive approach. Rather than updating the mainframe, the company added new applications and integrated them with the required data in the legacy system. Search Data Management reports:

"It's important to have Informatica in place because it provides us not only the ability to replicate our data, but also the ability to provide real-time information between systems," said Vinnie Le, Vice President of Information Systems (IS) at Oakwood. The platform enables better working relationships between internal users and corporate clients, many of which have integrated systems, Le added.

Read more about PowerCenter

Multichannel Contact Centers

From being a basic call center, this service has evolved into a contact center wherein the multichannel center offers touch points such as telephone, e-mail, Web chat, and fax. The type of service that companies can offer at these centers now includes in-depth customer service and sales functions including troubleshooting problems, prospecting, and leads generation. However, companies face certain issues when launching such an initiative:

Management sometimes tends to be out of touch with the day-to-day operations of the business, and takes decisions based on these inaccurate perceptions. It is important for managers to keep senior management in touch with such issues, so they have a realistic view of the scenario.

Integrating disparate applications or similar databases running on disparate platforms is another problem faced when trying to upgrade the contact center. The solution to this issue is APIs (application program interfaces) that use ODBC (open database connectivity) standards enable disparate databases and platforms to communicate. Some enterprises may need middleware instead of point-to-point or direct integration between data sources. Middleware creates a plug and play environment and doesn't require each field within a database to match up to a field in another database.

For handling customer queries in a contact center that offers multiple touch points, multitalented CSRs are required. The CSR skills required for such a contact center include being able to coordinate information coming into the organization via the Web, e-mail, and collaborative chat. CRM Today reports:

"I know of one company that got a handle on its high agent turnover rates by turning the job into a salaried position with benefits. After the agents saw themselves as being valuable to the company, turnover rates declined, and the company's investment began to pay for itself."

Customer Data Integration Challenges

Two basic challenges associated with a customer data integration (CDI) application are how to determine linkage between two records and determine that they refer to the same entity, and the ability distinguish non-connectivity between two data records. In other words, to accurately identify a 'match', and a 'non-match'. One way of finding a solution to this issue is to realize that we do not have to rely solely on names as criteria for the process. Explicit knowledge, inferred knowledge and embedded knowledge can help to make decisions regarding matches and non-matches. Explicit knowledge considers entity attribution that is clearly presented in the data instance. The challenge for customer data integration for this is to identify linking fields across data sets that may be represented differently. As human beings, we may be able to look at two contacts and figure out whether or not they refer to the same individual. However, for a computer system, implicit/inferred knowledge means relying on more complex algorithms to compute the degree of similarity and then combining it with other inputs to derive the inference that solidifies the link. CRM Today reports:

The challenges in exploiting embedded knowledge is threefold: Being able to recognize that embedded knowledge is present; being able to extract those values from the fields, in which they are embedded; and understanding how to build a “connectivity model,” in which the embedded information can be made explicit for use in linkage.