The importance of data integration among businesses of all kinds has never been more critical. Changing customer needs and demands, complex data sets, and disruptive times are a few reasons businesses need to employ advanced data integration strategies to deliver value. However, implementing data integration often presents multiple hurdles. Among those hurdles, complex data mapping, slow onboarding, burdened IT teams, high business costs, and unsatisfied customers are the most detrimental ones.

With the advent of technological advancements and the growth of AI-powered solutions, businesses have successfully managed to get past the challenges and deliver value much faster. Specifically, AI data integration solutions have emerged as a powerful antidote to these challenges. They provide a fresh paradigm for businesses, enabling them to streamline data integration processes, simplify data mapping, speed customer onboarding, alleviate IT load, reduce operational costs, and increase customer satisfaction. Overall, AI data integration solutions have become an urgent requirement for businesses to manage their data well and improve the markers of success.

In this blog post, we’ve highlighted the challenges and described how AI data integration platforms can help businesses overcome those challenges in detail.

Some Common Challenges of Data Integration

Complex Data Mapping: Complex data mapping is a huge challenge in the business world owing to the involvement of data from multiple sources. The challenge primarily arises from the different formats, semantics, and structures of data that businesses must integrate to gain actionable insights. The manual nature of traditional data mapping exacerbates this problem further. That’s because it demands time and expertise to implement mappings accurately. Inaccurate or incomplete data mappings can trigger errors or inconsistencies impacting decision-making and customer satisfaction.

Slow Customer Onboarding: Customer onboarding, the process of integrating new customers or partners into an existing business ecosystem, is a fundamental stage for businesses. If this process incurs delays, there is a direct negative impact on customers. Organizations that rely on traditional or legacy data integration methods, struggle to efficiently onboard customers. IT teams are required to implement custom codes and build data mappings to add new customers to their system. Now, that takes weeks or months of calendar time. At the same time, IT teams fail to focus on more high-value tasks. These delays frustrate customers as they don't receive the promised value on time. Consequently, businesses are more likely to experience delayed revenue generation, missed opportunities, and customer satisfaction. Finally, this impacts their competitive edge in the business landscape.

Burdened IT teams: When businesses rely on modern data integration methods, the responsibility of implementing data connections falls on the shoulders of IT. IT teams get consumed with labor-intensive process of creating custom integration codes. During the process, they fail to focus on higher-value tasks, including the optimization of system architecture, the reinforcement of data governance, or the enhancement of cybersecurity measures. This immense burden on IT not only compromises their performance but also their agility to respond to evolving business requirements. This leaves businesses with an IT team struggling to complete routine and repetitive processes, while potentially neglecting strategic tasks that could contribute to the company’s success and growth. Hence, the challenge of burdened IT teams represents a missed opportunity for IT professionals to deliver value to their organizations.

Low Customer Satisfaction Levels: When the customers face delays in receiving the value promised, they become frustrated and unhappy with the service. It’s highly likely that they won't buy the product or service from the company or leave entirely. In other words, unhappy customers can lead to attrition and damage to an organization’s reputation and success. Furthermore, organizations fail to accelerate revenue growth and improve the bottom line.

How AI-Powered Solutions Can Solve the Challenges

AI-powered data integration solutions play an important role in helping organizations face and overcome these challenges. How?

First, AI automates the intricacies of data mapping by helping users identify patterns and create mappings more accurately, quickly, and efficiently than manual processes. Adeptia AI data mapping approach enables businesses to map complex data streams and thereby integrate them much more effectively. Second, AI-powered solutions empower non-technical business users to onboard customers 80 percent faster than traditional data integration methods. Third, at the same time, IT is freed to focus on more high-value tasks. Fourth, with AI data integration solutions in place, businesses can reduce operational costs, minimize errors, and optimize resource utilization, ultimately leading to cost savings. Fifth, when companies can connect with customers sooner, it’s likely that they will deliver the value promised to them, which improves their satisfaction levels.

Overall, AI-powered technological advancements are the linchpin for businesses aiming to overcome these challenges and remain agile and competitive in today's data-driven world.