The Importance of Data Integration for Apps

Over 80% of enterprise business operations leaders say that data integration is critical to ongoing operations. Why’s it such a big deal? The lack of data integration leads to data latency, which directly impacts the context and value of the data available to you. In short, not having an accurate data integration solution can directly impact the growth of your business.

What’s the point of data integration? It’s all about, or at least your aim should be, the long-term automation of pulling data across various sources. There is no reason why, in 2021, you should be still manually pulling data from different sources just to gain an accurate overview of the health of your business.

Streamlining and organizing that process allows you to access a more enriched, accurate overview of your business’ most valuable information. Organizing that data and having it ready at your fingertips when and where you need it is invaluable in today’s digital landscape. Here’s why it’s so important and how you can improve your data integration process.

Why’s Data Integration So Important?

It’s often understated just how important data, in general, is for growing businesses, particularly startups. Just take a look at the stats. 

A study from Deloitte showed that 49% of businesses use analytics to help them make important decisions, 16% said that it enables them to develop key strategic initiatives, and 10% said that monitoring the right business metrics help them improve relationships with business partners and customers.

While finding a way to measure that data is critical, integrating it can be another challenge. The problem becomes less about a lack of data and more about the disorganization of that data. You’ve probably been there. You’ve got streams of data from Google Analytics, lots of data from Facebook Ads, and even more data from Mailchimp, Amplitude, or Firebase. 

That’s great, but you’re busy and your team is busy, so who’s going to sort through that data so that you can actually use it? Data integration is all about improving the process through which you actually consume the right data so that you’re able to use it more effectively.

The Challenges of Data Integration

Now, that’s not to say that we don’t understand just how difficult data integration is. It’s why we’ve developed AppFit. We ourselves have dealt with this issue within our own team, and it’s something that we’ve seen founders and teams struggle with for years. Namely, the challenges of data integration are three of the following.

Low-Quality Data

Low-quality data can be low-quality for a number of reasons. If you’ve got someone manually inputting analytics into a shared spreadsheet, for example, it could result in low-quality data simply because they’re making human errors, creating duplicates by mistake, or entering the data in a way that’s inconsistent with other entries.

And, simply put, if you can’t trust your business data then you can’t trust the analysis that you form from it. It’s useless. The same goes for low-quality data that is useless because it’s outdated. This is a big one for lots of young startups. 

Things move so fast that by the time someone’s able to update the spreadsheet or get the right overview in Google Analytics, somebody has implemented a new change or posted a new campaign and the previous metrics don’t really make much sense.

Multiple Sources

This is, without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges of data integration. It’s the reason for the need for data integration.

When you start building a business, and more specifically an app, you’re utilizing lots of different platforms to make things work. You’ve got to create a website, set up email campaigns, run paid ad campaigns, and manage the actual product itself. Each platform comes with its own analytics tools, which is great and useful, but not when it comes time to actually pull all that data together.

In the startup world where nobody has time to take on more than they’ve already got, it’s going to ruin efficiency and productivity if you have to task someone with pulling all of the right data together every single week just so that you can monitor business changes.

Lack of Integration Software

And, finally, the lack of integration software is why the two previous problems exist. Sure, there are a few solutions out there, but none of them seem easy enough to implement that they end up saving you significant amounts of time in the end.

Or, they pull data in for you but don’t organize it correctly. Or, and this seems to be the most common, they’ll integrate your data for you but do so in a way that feels even more overwhelming than before.

In short, there doesn’t really seem to be any software that allows you to pull data from the sources you need and easily show you only the metrics you need to be focusing on (at least until now...keep reading for a real solution).

How to Improve the Data Integration Process

Data integration is a key component for any business that wants to run efficiently and effectively. Data can be transformed into information, which in turn can be used as the basis for decisions and initiatives. 

This process is integral to every industry, from healthcare to fintech to business software companies. What’s more, data integration has many benefits including increased productivity and reduced costs through automation of manual processes. So, how do you improve your data integration process?

Try AppFit. It’s an app designed to combat all of the challenges mentioned above. Not only does it integrate data for you, but it organizes it all together in a way that’s easy to view and understand. Different teams are able to leave notes regarding important updates or campaign launches so that everybody understands why there’s a spike in a certain metric and what changed.

We give you the tools you need to check up on the health of your business straight from your phone. View only the metrics that help you grow and none of the ones that don’t. The result? A better business, a more efficient team, and a less stressed you.

Sound like something you need? Get in touch with our team to talk about a demo or to inquire about onboarding.