Data integration is the process of combining data from multiple, different sources into a single source of truth to provide businesses with a unified view of their customer and other business data. While it plays a crucial role in providing organizations with comprehensive insights into their operations, companies still face several data integration challenges.
Integrating data from various systems, such as ERPs and CRMs, requires careful consideration of data management policies, regulatory compliance, and understanding of how to navigate the technical complexities of managing on-premise and legacy data architectures. Businesses need to address these challenges, as it is essential for ensuring accurate and efficient decision-making.
Common Data Integration Challenges That Creates Roadblocks for Businesses
There are several challenges of data integration faced by businesses frequently. These challenges hinder their productivity, efficiency and prevent sustainable growth. Here are some data integration challenges:
Fragmented Sources and Different Types of Data Formats
Businesses collect data from various applications such as CRMs, ERPs, marketing tools, and customer service software. Each system uses different data formats, leading to inconsistencies while drawing out insights from these data. Businesses have been using their resources or employees to enter data manually, as a solution to consolidate different data formats into a standard format. However, it should be noted that collecting data from different sources, then converting them into a standardized format is a misuse of both time, efficiency and cost.
Data Silos and Accessibility Issues
Data silos occur when different departments or teams maintain separate datasets and are not shared across the organization. These isolated datasets can lead to inefficiencies across the organization, as employees may not have full access to the most up-to-date information.
For instance, if your marketing team cannot access the recent data collected by the customer service team then it may lead to missed opportunities, as they would be unable to create targeted campaigns or advertisements. Breaking down these data silos is critical for effective data integration.
Low-Quality and Outdated Data
If businesses do not have a standardized rule of maintaining data, then they will struggle with low-quality, outdated, and duplicate data. This issue also arises when data is entered manually and is not regularly updated, leading to unreliable data. This data cannot be used to draw analysis and generate customer insights. When businesses rely on this type of data, there is no value in the final decisions taken as they are void of any strong data to back their decisions.
Inadequate Integration Software
Businesses could face data integration challenges if the software used is not suited to their specific needs. For instance, syncing historical data with present data or integrating information from multiple sources, becomes a challenging task. The wrong choice of software or incomplete knowledge of how to use the software or technology can lead to incomplete data integration, undermining the effectiveness of the data collected.
Overwhelming Data Volumes
Businesses today collect vast amounts of data, and managing such large datasets can overwhelm existing integration systems. As data volumes increase, integrating, storing, and analyzing this data becomes more challenging. Large datasets require advanced data architecture and more resources to process, making integration slower and prone to errors. Managing this sheer volume of data while ensuring its quality can strain the current system and hinder businesses from carrying out their operations efficiently.
On-Premises or Legacy Architectures
Many businesses still operate leveraging legacy architectures and using a hybrid environment (a mix of cloud and on-premises data systems) to analyze their data. If businesses want to integrate data using these systems, the data integration process becomes complex.
Leveraging these legacy architectures and cloud systems simultaneously requires careful management of data flow. Moving data between these environments can be resource-intensive, and data integration challenges may arise during the transfer. These challenges create an unequal distribution of data across the organization.
Multiple Use Cases
Data integration often needs to accommodate different business needs. Data scientists may require refined raw data, while business analysts might need aggregated and formatted data to create reports and dashboards. These create data integration challenges, as supporting diverse use cases requires flexibility in the tools and systems used in the organization. Therefore, businesses need to choose a platform that is capable of handling multiple data format and serves different user needs.
Monitoring and Observability
Due to data integration challenges, monitoring data and having a comprehensive view of data becomes complex for businesses. Having a 360-degree view of customer data helps organizations track the measures that are being taken to attract customers and other business strategies. With modern integration workflows that span to multiple systems, errors occur at different points in the operations pipeline. Effective monitoring help businesses track errors, ensure data integrity, and resolve issues proactively.
How Businesses Can Solve Data Integration Challenges?
Businesses can tackle data integration challenges seamlessly with Salesforce Data Cloud. But what is Salesforce Data Cloud?
Salesforce Data Cloud is a powerful data platform that unifies all your company’s data onto the Salesforce Platform, creating a comprehensive, 360-degree view of your customers. By consolidating disconnected and fragmented data from various sources, Salesforce Data Cloud provides businesses with a trusted, accessible model that enhances personalization, automation, and AI-driven insights.
This platform empowers Sales, Service, and Marketing teams to deliver personalized customer experiences, automate processes, and use data-driven actions and workflows, all within the Salesforce ecosystem. With a single source of truth in place, tackling complex industry challenges becomes easy.
Use the Salesforce Data Cloud the Right Way to Tackle Data Integration Challenges
The Salesforce Data Cloud can help your team gain a comprehensive understanding of your customer as it is a part of the Salesforce Platform which is enriched with customer data and other related business data. These primary capabilities of the Salesforce Data Cloud make it a perfect solution for your data integration challenges:
Connecting to All Data Sources
The Salesforce Data Cloud easily integrates with business and customer data from Salesforce and from any other external source, enabling you to create a comprehensive, trusted customer profile. Using pre-built connectors and zero-copy integrations, you can quickly pull data from systems like AWS, Snowflake, and Google BigQuery to build a unified view of your customer.
Harmonizing Data
Built natively on Salesforce, Data Cloud simplifies the process of harmonizing fragmented data. It integrates all data into Salesforce’s standard metadata model, making it accessible within Salesforce applications like Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. With point-and-click mapping and pre-configured data bundles, harmonizing data becomes easy and efficient.
Activating Data
Data Cloud empowers teams to transform siloed data into powerful, unified resources. By enabling seamless integrations with Salesforce apps and other platforms, your teams can leverage this data to drive automations, business processes, and personalized experiences across multiple environments.
Take the Next Step with Salesforce Data Cloud and Kasmo
As businesses collect increasing amounts of customer data, they continue to face data integration challenges, making it difficult to create elevated customer experiences. With Salesforce Data Cloud, you can integrate and unify data from various sources, break down these silos and give your teams a complete view of your customers.
With Salesforce Data Cloud you can create seamless, personalized experiences across every touchpoint in your customers’ journey, increasing brand loyalty. By consulting with Kasmo’s Salesforce experts, you can elevate your data strategy and streamline processes, ensuring that every interaction is informed, relevant, and timely.
As a Salesforce Crest partner, we take immense care in keeping with data privacy and ethics, simultaneously ensuring that your customer data is always secure and compliant with global standards. With Salesforce Data Cloud and Kasmo, you can take control of your data, build trust with your customers, and pave the way for sustained business success.
