It’s important to know best practices for data integration and automation to ensure your processes are in working order.
Some of these practices include choosing the right integration software and automation tool for your needs, checking data quality during every stage of the process, using your chosen automation tool to make processes efficient, ensuring data is secure, and documenting data sources and the routes data travels.
These best practices can ensure your business can continue meeting goals, growing, and succeeding for years to come.
What are the best practices for data integration and automation?
Some of the best practices for data integration and automation include the following tips.
Make a plan:
- What are your goals as a business? Before you do anything else, your business objectives should be clearly documented so all future decisions align with those goals.
Data quality:
- Consistently check on data quality. Data should be validated for accuracy and consistency throughout the entire integration process.
- Data cleansing and transformations should be carried out to fix data inconsistencies.
Enhanced efficiency with automation:
- After choosing which automated data integration tool you will use, streamline data extractions, transformations, and loading processes.
- Monitor data pipelines so updates are carried out at the right times and potential problems are avoided. This monitoring should be scheduled.
Data governance:
- Data ownership, access rights, and standards for data quality should be established.
- Put together a plan for best data stewardship practices.
Data security:
- During the integration process, proper security measures should be put in place to protect sensitive information. This should include encryption and access controls.
Documentation:
- Data sources, destinations, and pipelines should all be well documented. By thoroughly documenting this process, problems can be identified quickly, making future maintenance easier.
Scalability:
- When choosing which tools to go with, make sure they are scalable. This means that your integration and automation tools should be able to handle a growing volume of data, system changes, and demands.
- Design flexible data pipelines to adapt to evolving business requirements.
Monitoring:
- Remember to track your data integrations with a monitoring system. Through triggered alerts, monitoring systems immediately let your team know when errors have been detected, ensuring fast error resolution.
Different methods of data integration:
- ETL: “Extract, transform, load” is the traditional and most common method of integrating data. It extracts data from source systems, transforms the data when necessary, and loads it into the new system.
- ELT: With the “extract, load, transform” method, raw data is extracted from the source systems and loaded into a data warehouse before transformations occur. This method can make analysis more flexible.
- Data virtualization: With data virtualization, data doesn’t get physically moved, but it can be viewed in another system than where it is housed. While most tools only allow you to view this data, Popdock, eOne’s virtual integration software, allows you to not only view the data but take action on it. It physically remains in its source system, but Popdock enables that data to be actionable from afar.
- CDC: ‘Change data capture” allows you to track edits made to source data and only moves updated records.
Want to learn more about best practices for data integration and automation?
Knowing the best practices for data integration and automation can greatly improve your business workflows and outcomes by efficiently maximizing data’s usability, quality, and usefulness.
If you would like to learn more about data integration and automation, read our last article which explains how you can integrate data automation with your existing systems. To learn more about SmartConnect, our traditional integration platform, and Popdock, our virtual integration platform, contact eOne Solutions sales team at sales@eonesolutions.com or 888-319-3663 ext.