Why Data Integration Is Central to Your Data-Driven Empowerment?

Enterprises realizing that scattered data can put severe bumps en route to a failsafe data strategy have also woken up to the fact that innovation cannot be imagined without sound data integration. 

The gains data integration guarantees far outweighs the cost, complexity, and the collaborative effort that goes into it. It creates a single trusted view of data that aids operations, analytics, and growth. 

So, why then data integration is seen as a resource-intensive, cost-consuming exercise by many enterprises, something that can endlessly wait? Perhaps, because data integration itself demands implementation at a deeper, strategic level. It is laden with roadblocks such as low data quality, siloed data in myriad (often legacy) applications, no data regulations, no specialized data management techniques, dependence on manual effort, and heterogeneity of data— which is why it seldom becomes their top priority.

Here we dig into the finer aspects of data integration and demonstrate why its importance cannot be overlooked. 

Data Integration from a Larger Context

Data integration is seen from the perspective of ‘Enterprise data Integration’ and ‘Customer Data Integration.’ 
The need for Enterprise Data Integration was felt by modern businesses when technology landscapes became interconnected. Automation took over, and data started getting leveraged to cull out valuable insights and examine new trends. Other benefits were productivity enhancement, removal of errors, and smarter synchronization.  

Today enterprise data integration is seen as a clear path to:

• Reducing complexity
• Getting the best value out of data by unifying systems
• Derive business intelligence for better decision-making
• Smoother collaboration among various business systems
• Smarter business decisions based on accurate predictability
• Increased data accessibility, security, and clarity
• Better customer experience
• Quick and dependable means of realizing enterprise goals

Customer data integration also contributes massively to the objectives of business growth. It gathers data from various applications and systems that come in touch with your customers, like sales, marketing, management, customer service, and other departments over chats, emails, websites, phone calls, social media, customer service interactions, in-person contact, etc.  

Since this data keeps getting recorded not only in separate systems but in a different format, type, and quality; therefore, to take its advantage, it must be unified, transformed, and cleaned so that a golden repository of customer data is created. 

This consolidated data provides invaluable insights and a 360-degree view of your customers. The benefits of customer data integration are as stated above: massive.

From customer profiling to tailored product placements, personalized engagement, proactive query resolution, near-perfect customer service, businesses always get to stay ahead of the curve.

Pimcore Offers a Way Ahead   

Data integration holds the key to unlocking significant gains for businesses of any size or industry. Whether it is product data, customer data, or master data, once unified — enterprises can streamline complex processes, automate data flows, empower teams to self-publish data, ease scalability, induce agility, and enable non-technical users to be quicker, more productive.   

With Pimcore, data integration becomes a breeze for manufacturers, retailers, and CPG businesses. Pimcore eases the import and export of data between itself and external systems, shared hard disks, vendors, or suppliers. Its ‘connect anything’ architecture and a comprehensive API-driven approach take connectivity to the next level by bringing together various enterprise systems like ERPs, CRMs, BI, ESB, or external third-party applications. The API used is either the native PHP or full-featured REST Webservice to enable real-time two-way communication with systems. 

These capabilities make Pimcore useful and ready for all kinds of enterprise data integration needs. It offers enough flexibility to bind systems for integrating and transforming data at whatever scale or speed and develop custom integrated solutions.    

Pimcore’s Data Hub: One Stop Solution to Data Integration

Pimcore data hub is a one-of-a-kind open-source platform for data consumption, unification, and delivery. It provides a centralized graphical user interface (GUI), which aids connectivity with CaaS (Content-as-a-Service) frontends like Vue, React, and PWAs with the help of GraphQL (which is the query language for APIs). It ensures that data can be managed and provided in structured, neutral formats, without any layout for multiple channels. 

Pimcore data hub integrates diverse input and output channel technologies in an easily configurable user interface. Data can be imported and exported into and from Pimcore in a variety of formats. It facilitates data pipelines, which can be utilized to automate data and used it again and again.    

The framework of Pimcore data hub is based entirely on Pimcore APIs. It encourages advanced connectivity and promotes standard connectors with eCommerce software as well as SaaS apps. It can be deployed anywhere — from on-premise to private or managed cloud services. 

Your Data Integration Strategy starts with Pimcore

Pimcore has integrated enterprise data for organizations belonging to various sizes and industries. For instance, we have implemented multi-site CMS and PIM systems to efficiently manage multiple website content and product information in a single platform. We have carried out integrations with SAP, Oracle ERP, Salesforce, and almost every external system in the past, to create a single source of truth.

Pimcore PIM builds a consolidated system using centralized data and content at its core to strengthen relationships between the enterprise and its vendors or customers.

Bringing data together streamlines internal operations and coordination among various teams by: 

• Automating workflow publishing and approvals
• Offering better flexibility to internal teams
• Empowering sales and marketing 
• Exporting data in different formats and languages to different geographical locations instantly.

Pimcore PIM offers importing and exporting CSV data for one or two-dimensional data models. Besides, data can be natively imported and exported in CSV and excel sheet formats. 

Pimcore MDM provides rich content integration and the capability to access, use, or reuse master data across a wide range of systems and applications.
Similarly, the Pimcore CDP platform offers customer data integration (CDI) to ensure that all relevant departments in your enterprise are armed with consistent access to the most accurate and updated customer information, all the time.

Beyond the Obvious Data Integration Benefits

The data revolution that’s reached our doorstep has brought data at such scale and speed that every enterprise has turned data-conscious and data-caring, making sound data integration strategy the most important step towards data-driven empowerment. 

Besides, with the increasing presence of AI, ubiquitous deployment of smart sensors and devices, and machine learning, data is becoming more significant and influential, prompting enterprises to see its transformative powers and the limitless possibilities it is capable of.  

All this makes data integration an essential piece of the puzzle to channel the ‘data storm’ that’s headed your way to your unique advantage. 
With Pimcore, your data-driven empowerment starts — here and now — without delay! 

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