One of the key deliverables in business intelligence is providing consistent, comprehensive, clean, conformed and current information for business people to enable analysis and decision-making. Delivering the five C’s is not achieved by BI tools simply accessing disparate data, but rather through data integration. Data integration combines data from different sources and brings it together to ultimately provide a unified view.
Data integration is like an iceberg. BI gets all the attention just like the part of the iceberg that visible as it is floating in the ocean. But the vast majority of the iceberg is below the waterline, just as the vast majority of the work in a BI project is in designing and developing data integration processes. As much as three quarters of the BI project’s time is devoted to data integration when new data sources are added to the data architecture.
With so much of the project’s time devoted to this one area, it is critical to adopt best practices to design robust, scalable and cost-effective data integration processes.
How we've helped others with their data integration needs
- Enabled a call center company to gather and integrate data from their multiple lines of business so they could get a complete and consistent view of their entire business.
- After a client had aquired several hundred businessess over the years they were faced with many legacy systems, all with their own data definitions. Our solution pulled all this data together consistently and seamlessly.

Our data integration insights:
- Selecting the right data integration tool for your needs
- How to evaluate the features of a data integration product
- How to justify the purchase of a data integration tool
- Data integration platforms take users beyond ETL software
- New developments make data integration a business-wide effort
- Misconceptions Holding Back Use of Data Integration Tools
- Interview: Decision time: Automated data integration tools versus manual coding
- Interview: BI software users report a sharp rise in data integration challenges
- Understanding the latest data integration strategies and technologies
- Understanding key data integration trends and business drivers