Data integration remains key despite new hype

Jeremy Waterman, MD of Softline ACCPAC, believes data integration will remain key to business intelligence (BI) success despite the hype over new technologies and trends.

The temptation to use new buzzwords to breathe life into existing technology is sometimes too hard to ignore. This year, we have acronyms such as CDI (customer data integration) and MDM (master data management), business activity monitoring (BAM) emerging; last year we had EII (enterprise information integration) and SOA (service-oriented architecture).

All vital and worthy of discussion, these technologies have one thing in common: data integration. What all these technologies need to be effective is data integration. So, as we forge ahead addressing the ever-changing needs of the market, let`s remain grounded in what matters: a big picture, one story, one view, a single version of the truth: the data.

At home within a BI solution, data remains key to the success of any BI solution. According to a recent Technology Evaluation report, BI is neither a product nor a system. It is an umbrella term that combines architectures, applications and databases. It enables the real-time, interactive access, analysis and manipulation of information, which provides the business community with easy access to business data. BI analyses historical data - the data businesses generate through transactions or by other kinds of business activities - and helps businesses by analysing the past and present business situations and performances. By giving this valuable insight, BI helps decision-makers make more informed decisions and supplies end-users with critical business information on their customers or partners, including information on behaviours and trends.

Underpinning BI, as we know, is good quality data. "The challenge," says Waterman, "is to ensure the BI tool is integrated with an ERP system`s transactional data. If it is, then the data is invariably accurate as well as up to date. True integration would allow for immediate drill down, checking the underlying transactions. If, on the other hand, it is another `Island of Information`, ie a disparate data warehouse where data is sent and accumulated, then there is a very good chance that this data is obsolete and incorrect, which needs to be resolved."

Addressing these challenges is simpler than most anticipate, according to Waterman. He says a product such as Accpac Insight, which provides online real-time integration to the underlying data, can make all the difference: "Making it even simpler is the fact that it is entirely Excel-based. All financial people will be able to use it effectively, while offering full data warehousing as well as sophisticated enterprise consolidation at the same time."

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Supporting Waterman`s view is BI Research, which says that one of the biggest growth areas in BI lies in its use for operational processing. Operational business intelligence typically requires access to more current data than the data provided by a traditional data warehousing system. As a result, interest in creating low-latency data stores for operational reporting analysis is increasing.

According to Waterman, this is the sweet spot for Softline ACCPAC. Through Accpac Insight, Softline ACCPAC provides enterprise-wide reporting, budgeting, forecasting and consolidation solutions. Employees, remote offices and disparate departments can manage, distribute and collaborate on data from a single, unified source. "This is vital as all users are working from one version of the truth."

A high-performance financial management tool, users create and customise reports that can withstand the toughest scrutiny. "Accpac Insight extends far beyond your general ledger, providing a powerful budgeting solution complete with bottom-up budgeting, write-back, drill-down and other advanced capabilities. It provides access to your critical operational and sales data, as well as customer, product, vendor, employee and geographic data."

Along with powerful reporting capabilities, Accpac Insight offers budgeting, consolidations, report distribution, Web deployment and data warehousing, and is an ideal solution for companies with remote employees or multiple locations that require real-time access to company data.