Data plays a crucial role in every modern manufacturing and distribution business. It aids in decision making, indicates areas of success and failure, and creates unique insights to improve and innovate. Yet managing business data can get quite messy. Without the proper methods to extract, aggregate, and organize your data, finding meaningful insight can be impossible.
So, how can you effectively manage your data? Many distributors, manufacturers, and supply chain organizations have found that utilizing data integration tools is the most effective way to gain meaningful insights from their ERPs.
Understanding Data Integration
Data integration involves combining data from disparate sources, systems, and applications into a cohesive whole. Across an organization, this process is essential for maintaining data consistency. Unifying data from sources that were previously disconnected, integration allows for a comprehensive view over your business data. Essentially, it ensures your back-end systems stay connected while providing a holistic overview of your organization’s information.
However, data integration can present challenges. Recent findings from an Intowave [1] study found that about 74% of manufacturers still rely on manual methods for data integration. These methods require the use of paid employees to manually extract, transform, and aggregate data in order to keep outdated systems functional. While this practice can work for a time, manual data integration is unsustainable, especially for larger organizations. Manual integration often leads to inefficiencies, increased costs, and potential inaccuracies in data.
Manual data integration can become a major obstacle for manufacturers and distributors aiming for sustainable growth and improvement. To address these challenges, many organizations turn to data integration tools that offer automation capabilities. These tools can effectively address the inefficiencies of the manual integration processes, providing a stronger, more reliable approach to data integration.
Top 3 Reasons to Adopt Data Integration Tools
A recent study by Fivetran revealed that companies spend an average of $520K annually on data engineers to build and maintain data pipelines [2]. This is indicative of the need for many companies to automate the data integration process through data integration tools.
In fact, here are three key benefits of adopting these tools:
1. Enhanced Data Accuracy
Poor data quality costs U.S. companies up to $3 trillion each year, according to Christina R. Fritsch of The National Law Review [3]. This staggering figure highlights a critical need for accurate data. Data integration tools can help improve data accuracy by minimizing human error and providing more reliable information on inventories, customers, sales, and other key metrics. With better data accuracy, you can make more trustworthy business decisions and avoid the pitfalls of poor data management.
2. Improved Decision-Making
By boosting data accuracy, intelligence, and accessibility, data integration tools enable more informed decision-making. They also speed up data access and analysis. A report from Agility PR [4] indicates that about 90% of companies struggle with real-time analytics from their ERPs. Data integration tools address this challenge by automating tasks that were previously manual, allowing for faster data analysis and more timely decisions. Enhanced speed and reliability in data processing lead to better decision-making overall.
3. Increased Efficiency and Productivity
Without data integration tools, companies allocate roughly 44% of their time and resources to hiring engineers for data pipeline management. Integration tools reduce this burden by eliminating costly errors and saving time, effort, and labor associated with manual data integration. Automating these tasks not only enhances the operational efficiency of a company, but also frees employees to focus on more proactive and innovative activities rather than on routine data management.
The Best Data Integration Tools for Your Systems
When looking to implement ERP integration effectively, you should consider which tool works best for the job. Listed below are some of the best data integration tools to consider so you can gain better ERP insights:
Kore Integrate
Kore Integrate is a data warehousing solution that will improve your data reporting, scalability, functionality, and speed. For those who use Rocket Software’s UniVerse and UniData MultiValue databases, Kore Integrate is one of the best integration solutions. Kore’s data integration tool can also pull from ODBC-enabled data sources like SQL, Postgres, Oracle, etc. By connecting disparate sources, you can create a unified view of the important data within your organization, while reducing operational costs.
Infor OS
Infor OS can help manufacturers and distributors integrate their Infor LN system. Aiding in workflows, OS can help connect all your disparate systems effectively. Providing workflow automation, Infor OS is a useful tool for anyone using an Infor LN and looking for ERP integration. With capabilities that meet your needs, Infor OS might be a great solution for you.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides a robust suite of pre-built connectors to organizations using Oracle Fusion ERP. Offering great data automation capabilities, OCI can deliver strong and up-to-speed analytics for your Oracle system. Designed to connect both cloud and on-premise applications, it can help you integrate your ERP effectively.
Conclusion
As data becomes vital for the modern manufacturer, being able to manage your data effectively is crucial. Ultimately, data integration tools are a necessary step to modernize your organization’s data systems. Giving you the power to save you time, money, and resources, data integration tools allow you to put the best foot forward for your business.
References: [1] Intoware, I. (2022, July). Break Free From Disconnected Data – Process & Control July Issue 2022. Break free from disconnected data – Process & Control July issue 2022. https://www.intoware.com/resources/break-free-from-disconnected-data
[2] Fivetran (2021) Wakefield Research Analysis of Results for Fivetran. Fivetran https://get.fivetran.com/rs/353-UTB-444/images/2021-CDL-Wakefield-Research.pdf
[3] Fritsch, C. R. (2022, December 23). 12 days of CRM: Day 9 – how much does bad data actually cost?. The National Law Review. https://natlawreview.com/article/12-days-crm-day-9-how-much-does-bad-data-actually-cost
[4] Carufel, R. (2022, May 19). Data Disconnect: Over 80 percent of companies rely on stale data for decision-making. Agility PR Solutions.https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/data-disconnect-over-80-percent-of-companies-rely-on-stale-data-for-decision-making/
Maxwell Dallinga is a content writer and editor from the Cleveland, Ohio area. Currently, he writes on topics of business, data, and eCommerce.
