Saturday, July 7, 2007

What Is Enterprise Data Integration

Enterprise data integration is the process of combining information from various business data resources on demand to fulfill particular enterprise requirements. It also includes the sharing of data among various business applications. Enterprise data integration is considered as one of the most needed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practices. Today, enterprise data integration is widely practiced by all companies and business groups, especially Internet-based companies. There are also many types of data integration systems and software programs designed for this purpose.

There are many advantages of enterprise data integration. This includes reduction in data accumulation, elimination of duplicate data, decrease in time expenditure in capturing data, quick data delivery, fast data sharing, time and capital saving by automated data entry, escape form manual report preparing and printing, better product marketing, on demand data availability, better customer data integration, better customer contact management, enhancement in sales force automation processes (SFA), and simplification of all business procedures.

Enterprise data integration cover a range of data management techniques such as MDI (Master Data Management), EII (Enterprise Information Integration), ETL (Extract-Transform-Load), EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), CDI (Customer Data Integration) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). The general processes involved in enterprise data integration procedure are data consolidation, data federation and data propagation or data migration. Automated customer contact management, leads generation, task management and account management are some applications of enterprise data integration.

The enterprise data processing systems and software programs, commonly known as enterprise data integration solutions are talented to accessing multiple remote databases in tandem, providing real-time meaningful information and resources. They are programmed to put right information in right places. The main data storing devices are consolidation repositories, data warehouses and data marts. The enterprise data entry software programs are equipped with advanced communication tools, either internet-linked or local network-linked, which help in integrating all resources.

Generally there are five levels in an enterprise data integration procedure. That are, enterprise portals or user interfaces that include customer contact sites such as payment processing solutions, sale systems and bookkeeping systems; collaboration tools or software programs that coordinates all proceedings; business process management systems; enterprise applications integration tools and systems and enterprise information integration tools.

Well implemented enterprise data integration solutions eliminate data latency, false/duplicate data entry and data pollution. A perfect solution must be able to obtain data from all company resources and from all data formats like excel spread sheets, PDF files, company sales graphs and pictures, and from other application resources. The data integration solution must provide all wanted information from any where quickly and smoothly.

The fundamental step in enterprise data integration is the automation of all data works. All large sized companies and corporations now have their own data integration centers or resource management departments for automating all customer information related practices. These departments will design customized integration tools and best practices to help corporation’s integration architecture. On the other hand, for medium and small sized companies with small capital investment, managing a separate department can be difficult. For these companies, now there are some enterprise data integration service/software providers offering their service.

Before implementing an enterprise data integration system, the company must design data integration architecture for the company using all their data resources. For that they have to track all operating business unites with in the organization, and have to give priorities to them. Healing broken data links, organizing a data source system - from which one can access resources, and information hubs, can greatly help in proper data integration.

Today there are many data integration software vendors and service providers in the market. You can find them by just searching on Internet. If you are looking for enterprise data integration software, look for one software vendor who offers customized software packages. Open source software packages are also available; you can customize them if you have enough technical assistance. If you are looking for an online service provider, enquire that the provider offers proper security to all your information. Also make sure that the online service provider has enough data integrating capacity.

This article has been published by eSalesTrack.com , a US based provider of on-demand CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and other application software such as Sales Force Automation and Data Integration Service.

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