How to Prepare for Data Integration Investments That Drive Business Value

When it comes to making critical business decisions, organizations have to combine current and historical data to recognize trends and forecast future results. And that means using data integration technology to pull data from multiple sources together to get the right information to the right people at the right time so they can make the right business decisions.

Because data integration is so important to a company's success, we spoke with two experts in the field to discuss the importance as well as the challenges of data integration, both of who will be participating in MSDynamicsWorld.com's Data Integration Webcast Series this fall:

• Dan Power, founder and President of Hub Solution Designs Inc. a global management and technology consulting firm specializing in Master Data Management (MDM) and data governance.
• Dane Koepke, Vice President, Channel Development, Green Beacon Solutions LLC.

Q. What are some of the most common integration investments in business software that show clear ROI?

A. Power: Anything that would increase revenue. Those are things that we call raising CRM effectiveness. A lot of times there are CRM applications out there that don't really provide a complete picture. So if someone is already your customer, you're still only getting the tip of the iceberg about them. If you want to know the more complete picture then you have to fill that in by integrating data in from other parts of the enterprise - from an ERP application, for example, to ...