Data Integration Software in Retail and Consumer Goods
The retail and consumer goods vertical has shown tremendous adoption of data integration tools, as it helps them to consolidate the data from numerous sources, such as POS, mobile apps, web, contact centers, and social channels to deliver seamless customer experience. The retail industry being one of the most competitive industries will be looking to embrace data integration tools substantially, as it would help them to get a 360-degree view about customer data that will help them to design targeted marketing promotions, enhance cross-selling and up-selling offers, and hone customer services.
The continuous rise of big data, growth of e-commerce, and increased usage of social media are a few of the drivers boosting the growth and adoption of data integration tools in the retail and consumer goods vertical. The vertical is generating an exhaustive amount of data from social media, where customers are openly sharing ideas and opinions with friends through numerous networking platforms. The data can be captured from these places, integrated together, analyzed, and valuable information can be extracted to meet customer demands, increase sales, improve business performance, and thereby have a differentiating edge over the competitors. The retail sector is also adopting the data integration tools to gain superiority over their operations and streamline business objectives. The Colruyt Group, a supermarket chain in Europe with more than 380 stores in Belgium alone and a turnover of USD 9.8 billion, deployed the data integration software from Informatica to gain higher operational efficiencies. The group wanted to expand its business footprint in the low-margin European food retail market and improve the decision-making processes while increasing the efficiencies of IT infrastructure. Leveraging Informatica’s data integration software, the company was able to easily migrate all the data from the operational systems to data warehouse, creating a retail reporting infrastructure, power Cockpit, and its own custom application for management reporting. The company benefitted substantially, as the data integration software helped to save time and cost, enhanced operational efficiencies, improved data quality, and gained better transparency in the system. Above all, leveraging Informatica helped the company to create one central team rather than different teams for each of the action.
20 companies offering Data Integration Software in Retail and Consumer Goods were analyzed, shortlisted and categorized on a quadrant under Visionary Leaders, Innovators, Dynamic Differentiators, and Emerging Companies.
Informatica, Microsoft, SAS, Oracle, IBM, Talend, and SAP have been identified as visionary leaders as they have established product portfolios and a robust market presence and business strategy.
Scribe Software, Attunity, Information Builders, Elastico, Stone Bond and Denodo have been identified as innovators as these vendors have a very focused product portfolio. However, they do not have very strong growth strategies for their overall business.
Acxiom, Cloveretl, and Bedrock Data have been identified as emerging companies. They do not have very strong business strategies as compared to other established vendors. They might be new entrants and require some more time before gaining significant traction in the market. Boomi, Pentaho and Cisco Systems have been recognized as dynamic differentiators.
Vendor evaluations are based on two broad categories: product offering and business strategy. Each category carries various criteria, based on which vendors have been evaluated. The evaluation criteria considered under product offerings include breadth of offering, delivery, features/functionality, product quality and reliability, and product differentiation. The evaluation criteria considered under business strategy include geographic footprint (on the basis of geographic presence), channel strategy and fit, vision alignment, and effectiveness of growth (on the basis of innovations, partnerships, collaborations, and acquisitions).
VISIONARY LEADERS
Visionary Leaders generally receive high scores for most evaluation criteria. They provide mature and reputable data integration services. They also have strong business strategies. Informatica, Microsoft, SAS, Oracle, IBM, Talend, and SAP are the leading players in the data integration software market and are recognized as leaders. These vendors are making their presence felt by offering services that are required by most organizations.
INNOVATORS
Innovators demonstrate substantial product innovation as compared to their competitors. They have a very focused portfolio of data integration software solutions and the potential to build strong business strategies for their business growth to be at par with the leaders. However, they do not have very strong growth strategies for their overall business. Scribe Software, Attunity, Information Builders, Elastico, Stone Bond and Denodo are recognized as innovators. Innovators have been at the forefront in deploying their services based on the clients’ custom software requirements for the niche market.
DYNAMIC DIFFERENTIATORS
Dynamic Differentiators are established vendors with very strong business strategies. However, they are low in the product portfolio. They generally focus on a specific type of technology related to the product. Boomi, Pentaho and Cisco Systems are recognized as dynamic differentiators.
EMERGING COMPANIES
Acxiom, Cloveretl, and Bedrock Data are recognized as emerging players in the data integration software market. The emerging players are specialized in offering highly niche and tailor-made solutions and services to their clients. They do not have very strong business strategies as compared to other established vendors. They might be new entrants in the market and require some more time before gaining significant market traction.Data Integration Software in Retail and Consumer Goods
Scribe ready-to-go connectors adapt to software updates, it is a simple graphical interface for code-free customization and management tools that keep things working smoothly. Scribe, works with connecting data among apps that our business groups are always asking for new data integrations which in turn helps in driving business efficiency. Scribe’s Agile Integration Platforms helps for large Enterprises, Small to Medium Businesses, Systems Integrators, and SaaS Providers. Sribe offers a lot of flexibility and configurability so one can connect data from one system to just about any other system we need to. Scribe also offers connectors to many other enterprise applications, so one has the option to streamline data movement to other systems in the future.
Elasticio hybrid integration platform has a rich library of pre-built connectors for mainstream business applications. Elasticio helps in transforming data between various applications and systems by mapping data into specific fields where the next generation components expect to receive.It helps in detecting inconsistencies in integration workflows to find the source of errors and fix rebelling workflows within short span of time. The company’s hybrid integration platform is easily connected to existing on premise or deployed on premise. The benefit of using Elasticio is that the platform is easily extensible which ensures fast development of new integration components with minimum efforts. elasticcio provides developers with a complete integrated suite of tools and technology that make connecting disparate software easier, less time-consuming and more cost-effective.
Pentaho Multithreaded data integration engine scales up and out and includes deployment to clustered and cloud environments. The company’s dynamic and reusable data integration templates enables users to create transformations on the platform. It manages and processes data in on-premises, hybrid and multicloud environments. It effortlessly switches from data-processing engines with in-cluster execution to increase data productivity. It also helps reducing the time needed to provide data models for business users, improving collaboration between business and IT. It helps in reducing development time by using data services to virtualize transformed data and making the data available for reports and applications.
The company uses Relational Database integration which is possible using intelligent and patented AppComms. The simple drag and drop interface of Enterprise Enabler provides users with a relational view of existing relational and non-relational databases on any imaginable platform. Stone Bond’s Relational Database AppComms offers the broadest range of integration options which enables users to access to data in operational systems, federate and sync data in warehouses without staging or designing architecture to address the unique information needs of all users.
The CloverDX previously known as Cloveretl, differentiates itself from competitors, based on the quality of its products in harmony with outstanding levels of service. The company goes extra mile to make things happen and respond rapidly to requests, never taking its customers for granted. It provides a full set of database readers and writers, JSON, XML and CSV processors, complex field mapping, email parsing, data aggregation, sorting, de-duplication and many other integration components. The technical support and maintenance package offered includes direct access to a dedicated customer portal and support team, who are right next to their developers and data consultants.
Bedrock integration starts with selecting from wide range of connectors including HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, ConnectWise, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, SugarCRM, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, Infusionsoft, Cvent and more. It can connect more than two systems at a time and map specific fields including custom fields. It provides the option to leverage object relationships e.g. to pull data from an account to a contact record, which opens data flexibility. It also pairs the data across the system by using uniques identifier for each object type. As new data comes into any connected system, it gets paired using the unique identifier. Unlike native connectors that tend to sync in only one direction, this de-duplication and pairing process works in all directions, keeping data de-duplicated & clean.
Acxiom is a technology and services company that offers the data foundation for the world's best marketers. They permit people based marketing everywhere through a simple, open approach to connecting systems and data that drives seamless customer experiences and higher ROI. They assess omnichannel data sources, formats and systems to ensure the best Open Garden architecture. Their architect solutions for tech stack enables data orchestration that is focused on a specific strategy, budget, and challenges to achieve optimal sustainability and ROI. They help in configuring data environments for true omnichannel identity resolution and activation across apps and platforms. They connect new and existing applications with data environments for efficient data orchestration. They help in optimizing capabilities and performance and enables growth in new data sources, channels and use cases.
