Data integration (DI) is often seen as merely a technical discipline, but this ignores the vital role it plays in helping enterprises achieve their business goals. It is essential that business managers, as well as technical staff, understand how better DI can help deliver against key commercial goals, such as helping the organization become more efficient, agile, innovative and customer centric.

Telesperience research indicates a pattern of high and increasing demand for DI from the business, as well as a recognition that DI is a key strategy for lowering costs and improving business performance. However, most enterprises also report that their DI projects over-run on either cost or time (or both) and that DI costs are either too high or more than anticipated.

This paper explains why DI is an important weapon in an enterprise's competitive arsenal by analysing how poor DI inflates costs, by revealing the current DI drivers, and by explaining how DI can contribute to commercial success.

Telesperience's Research Director Teresa Cottam says: "Our research demonstrates that companies that are able to deliver DI projects quickly, reliably and at low cost will out-perform their rivals, because they will be able to exploit new technologies and insights to gain competitive advantage and reduce their costs."