In any business there are complex relationships. These relationships exist between functions, departments, customers, Suppliers, Contractors, .. and the list could go on.

Often these relationships involve data flow between each, and often these data sets are not compatable both in format or actual content.

However this does not diminsh the need to share this data to allow the business processes to flow.

This data flow has to be achieve for the business to operate, and this 'sharing' can often be the root cause of inefficiencies in a business, as the data maybe incorrect and incomplete.

The possibilities of data being wrong or incomplete causes all sorts of issues from excessive checks and validations to failures in operational tasks and staff tensions.

So a homgenous business system goes a long way to overcoming these types of issues but the reality is that there will always be disparate systems, either internally or externally,

that means there will be the need to integrate data sets somehow!

A lot of small business do this manually and this can seem the best approach with the human mind making the decisions required relating to integrity and completeness.

However this also opens the door for errors and thus problems downstream. This approach is often in parallel with double entry of data in each of the system being used.

Automating the integration between data sets can produce startling efficiency gains not just in the conversion & integrity of the data but also in the time it takes to do.

This area in a business can often be left unattended because it can be seen as hard to define and execute.

The integration of data sets will always be necessary , the issue of how it is done can lead to great gains that are displayed right through an organisation.