Business Objects data quality solutions for Informatica offers market-leading data quality tools and provides seamless integration of data quality functionality within the PowerCenter environment. Business Objects provides Informatica users the most complete and tightly integrated data quality product on the market.
Business Objects data quality is seamlessly built into Informatica's PowerCenter installations, providing verification and correction of customer and business information, as well as extensive matching capabilities. With the rapid deployment of data quality into the Informatica data flow, users can create a single customer view and produce better results from decision support and business intelligence systems.
The data cleansing transformation allows you to handle various data formats (i.e. fielded and unfielded data) and prepare the information for matching through parsing and standardization. Once the data has been cleansed, matching takes the data one step further, resulting in more effective data comparisons and customer-record building.
Matching and consolidation are the most important steps that the data goes through before it's loaded into a data warehouse or operational data store. Once data has been cleansed, matching makes sure that everyone in your enterprise - marketing, product development, fulfillment, and customer service - shares a single view of each customer and can make better business decisions.
Data Quality for Informatica Frequently Asked Questions
What is data quality?
Data quality is defined as standardizing and consolidating customer and/or business data. By cleansing/enhancing the data and combining related records to avoid duplicate entries, you're able to create a single record view. Within Informatica, this all takes place prior to the initial load to the target database as well as during the on-going data maintenance and updating processes.
How can a data quality solution be implemented into my Informatica transformations, even internationally?
Business Objects data quality tools work directly with Informatica to make this easy. Business Objects core components have been integrated as transformation components using the Informatica External and Advanced External Procedures protocols. This allows you to invoke these components for parsing, standardization, cleansing, enhancement, and matching of name and address data during the data movement stage of building a data mart or data warehouse.
When and where should I integrate data quality into my Informatica application or other transformation projects in my enterprise?
Data quality should be integrated any place where data is entered, loaded, processed, or updated. Without data quality, the true power of Informatica may not be realized. As you may know, Informatica allows users to take valuable customer and business data from a variety of disparate sources, and consolidate that information into a comprehensive data warehouse.
Does data quality make a difference in analytical applications?
Yes! If you are utilizing any analytic tools, data quality is imperative to the success of those applications. Business Objects Data Quality for Informatica is a pre-packaged, yet powerful way to get customer data cleansing, standardization and matching integrated into the Informatica ETL process - as it is being entered. This solution can help you realize a quicker deployment and faster ROI, enhance your ability to market to customers, and enable better analysis by improving the quality of your underlying data.
Can I integrate a data quality solution within other software applications?
Data quality solutions can be fully integrated into CRM, ETL, ERP, or BI solutions and have the advantage of being "seamless" to the end user - reducing the learning curve, as well as decreasing the implementation timeframes. Your data process flow should not have to be modified to add a new data quality solution. Through integration and strategic partnerships you are assured of getting a best-of-breed solution.
Will a data quality solution handle my international data?
Yes. To build a relationship with your global customers, it's first necessary to have a precise, single customer view. Customer data quality on a global level can be achieved in much the same way as in the Americas. Look for vendors that allow you to identify country names, format and standardize addresses, correct missing address information, and assign postal codes for each respective country. Localizing an address is also critical to effectively target your customer. For this reason, be sure your software provides regional language translation for multilingual countries as well as full recognition of diacritical characters. With a good data quality tool you can reach your customers whether they are next door or halfway around the globe.
How easy is it to maintain a data quality solution after implementation?
The on-going maintenance is minimal. Once the solution is implemented and configured, typically maintenance will be required only when you receive a new release or decide to change your application or business rules.
What are the benefits of a data quality solution?
The biggest benefit is the confidence you have that your data is accurate. A data quality solution also allows you to:
- Transform data from a variety of sources into a streamlined view prior to being loaded into your target database.
- Manage customer data in different formats on separate databases
- Consolidate multiple identities of the same customer across several legacy data sources, and create a single customer view
- Enable enterprises to deliver clean, reliable data throughout their expanding information supply chains to all varieties of operational and analytical applications.
What are the benefits of using an integrated solution vs. a standard solution?
With a pre-integrated solution, you are assured of a solution that has been tested and implemented within your existing applications. By implementing the data migration and data quality process together you are assured that your data is being moved to the target database in the most accurate and complete form.
The joint solution of Business Objects and Informatica allows you to combine two of your application's critical data process flows in one streamlined environment.
The integrated solution allows you to be an "expert" in only one environment, lowering the learning curve, decreasing implementation time, and in turn, improving your ROI.
What versions of Informatica's technology do you support?
Informatica's PowerCenter (7x and 8x platforms)
Data Quality for:
Resources
- Data Quality for Informatica - 82KB PDF
- Data Quality from Business Objects - 452KB PDF
- Technology - Data Quality XI