More companies than ever are incorporating software apps and SaaS (software as a service) products into their employees’ workdays. The aim of these products is to help productivity, communication, and organization, but it hasn’t necessarily bridged the data access gap. Businesses need to seriously consider rectifying the vast amount of time employees spend pursuing information and updating data.

Why is this an issue? In many companies, employees waste nearly 10 hours a week searching for and gathering information.

Thankfully, virtual integration can solve these information-access problems in a single app, granting access to employees whenever and in whatever app they need.

What is virtual integration?

Virtual integration is a term coined by eOne Solutions for its virtual integration tool, Popdock. This type of data integration works differently than standard migration/integration solutions and tools.

Instead of moving every piece of data to your new system, virtual integration accesses data in an old system, a data lake, or other applications and displays that real-time data in your new system, application, or the Popdock app for daily reporting. This prevents the performance of your new system or app from getting bogged down with old data.

This self-service BI (business intelligence) and iPaaS (integration platform as a service) tool by eOne Solutions provides employees with the data they need from various apps in the applications in which they’re already working.

This isn’t limited to just viewability access. You can make actions on that data. With virtual integration, you’re able to see related data, drill into the source app, update data, add comments, run integrations, and alert colleagues. It’s revolutionary for businesses everywhere.

Why is virtual integration important?

Connecting apps, integrating the apps, and getting data to the right people at the right time is challenging. Most modern-day businesses use more than 15 different software applications and think the answer to all data-access issues is with a complex extract, transform, and load (ETL) solution.

Even companies that have already invested in SaaS products need to realize that employees are having data information access issues. Searching across all these apps is eating up far too much time and harming the quality and accuracy of their work.

Workers in every area need to do their job and do it efficiently. They need a better solution for accessing data.

Virtual integration is used to view and access data easily and is always pulling real-time data. It’s a fast, convenient way to filter data from another system, whether you need to view or update products on hand, sales transactions related to individual customers, or many other scenarios. Virtual integration shows relevant data in an accessible and timely way.

In many situations, companies only need insight into the data they’re currently working with. This can be as simple as a salesperson asking their accounting department to run AR reports or give them a list of customers over a credit limit.

When you only need specific information and don’t want or need to transfer every piece of data from one system to the other, virtual integration is the perfect solution.

Thanks to virtual integration, data access is simple, fast, and easy. It enables and empowers team members from all departments to access, view, and share the data they need. With Popdock, you can embed and display data in the apps you’re already using in real-time from its source(s).

Using virtual integration, you can save yourself the hassle and expense of having to move and duplicate data over to another system. Popdock provides data visibility to team members across departments.

How is virtual integration different than traditional integration?

Traditional integration is the standard approach used to share data between systems. It allows you to take data from one environment and transfer it to another system. You can also update or transform that data in one system and send it back to the other environment.

By using a tool like eOne Solutions’ SmartConnect for traditional integrations, you can generate data between systems with the correct timing for in-bulk, changes-only and real-time triggers. Traditional also offers native application search options in some systems.

This type of integration is essential when you’re trying to create, replace, update, or delete data in one system or another. It’s also necessary if you need data in another system for processing purposes.

For example, if you need an item, a customer, an invoice, currency, or other factors created, updated, or deleted, you’ll also need to incorporate traditional integration.

Traditional integration tools, such as SmartConnect, use complicated mappings going back and forth in order to keep everything in sync. With virtual integration, you can simplify the process and get a real-time view of the information you need in the systems you’re already working in. You can run those reports you need to see without having to update both systems.

Virtual integration is the perfect fit when you don’t need to move data to the new system; you just need to view it. It’s ideal for broadening data access among departments and lowering migration and storage costs, enabling you to stop maintaining old SQL Servers and paying an arm and a leg for maintenance costs.

How traditional and virtual integration types can work together

There is a time and place for both types of integrations. In this fast-paced age where businesses must keep up to survive, both processes may be necessary. These integration tools can work together to make your departments more efficient and more functional than ever.

In order to comprehensively integrate systems, SmartConnect and Popdock provide a complete integration suite. Both options provide an impressive amount of flexibility to configure integrations for your unique business needs.

What you can do with Popdock

Popdock allows you to embed and display data in any system. By adding a Popdock widget to your apps, you can filter down lists and embed data exactly where you need to see it. You no longer have to grab data from other systems, because it’s already in the system you are working in. You’re even able to use Popdock for virtual integration with Excel.

The helpdesk worker can stay in their helpdesk software, and the accountant can stay in their accounting software. Popdock was built with these concepts in mind. Workers are able to see the data they need access to inside their own department apps.

Popdock:

  • Saves you from the hassle and expense of having to move and duplicate data over to another system in order to provide data visibility and access to team members across departments.
  • Empowers you to simplify complex integrations and make relevant data from other systems conveniently viewable.
  • Allows the people who want to view this
    data to easily do so in the applications in which they’re already working.
  • Integrates all your data from on-premise and cloud applications into a single, real-time app and is the answer for all your daily reporting needs.
  • Leaves all the data in its place, whether that’s an old system or a data lake.
  • Provides you access to real-time and historical data.
  • Allows you to easily show totals and subtotals for a data set, making this an invaluable tool for every mid-market company.
  • Enables you to embed more data with an easy interface to search or filter data quickly from other systems.

Popock is ideal for the following migration scenarios:

  • You are migrating to a new system.
  • Your end users need some level of access to legacy data.
  • The cost to map and move legacy data is more expensive than Popdock.
  • The cost to store legacy data in your new system is more expensive than the current location or than data lake storage.

Whether you’re hoping to build virtual integration into Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 365, Salesforce, or any other application, Popdock can save you and your team time and money.

Virtual integration and legacy data

As companies continue transitioning to new systems, whether on-prem or on the cloud, data migration is imperative–and often challenging. Data that is stored in antiquated or obsolete systems is called legacy data. It can be difficult to access and process, but Popdock makes it easy to store and access this old information.

Popdock provides access to legacy data from anywhere, whether that’s an existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship (CRM) system location, a data lake (a repository of stored data in its raw format), or your structured query language (SQL) location.

You can use Popdock’s data lake management to publish any data to a data lake for more cost-effective storage. This can be a select set or your entire database.

Reach out for more information

Whether you need to access real-time or historical data from a data lake from multiple apps, connect and work amongst multiple cloud-based apps, perform seamless integrations from your on-prem systems to a cloud-based app, or a number of other scenarios, Popdock can provide the help, support, and performance you need to work efficiently and surpass your goals.

Increase accessibility and efficiency by using Popdock as your data access interface and easily access external data in any of your apps.

Contact our sales team at sales@eonesolutions.com or 888-319-3663 ext. 1 for more personalized help in answering your questions. They are always eager to provide help and answers for your data access and migration needs.