The MSIGHTS Blog

The marketing technology landscape has exploded over the past 10 years with thousands of marketing and advertising platforms coming into existence.

This explosion has fueled the increase in fragmented and siloed data sources. As a result, one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of marketers realizing MarTech success has become integration.

Not all data integration processes are equal. They typically fall into one of two categories:

• Original Source - A one-way push of data connects to the source “as is.” The data remains disjointed in a data lake until it is needed for analysis. This is a relatively quick, cheap, and easy integration. It’s less flexible and scalable on the way out for reporting and analytics.
• Modeled/Transformed – A system of record synchronization that structures and models data upon integration. Multiple sources are joined or fused in the data model, and data transformation tools and applications can be applied. Data is highly scalable on the way out for reporting and analytics.

An Ascend2 study* reported that 52 percent of marketers responded that their biggest barrier to success is integrating disparate systems. If we had to guess which integration those 52 percent of marketers experienced, we’d put our money on the first option.

The critical step beyond integration is data transformation. But if a company stumbles over the hurdle of integration, then transformation can’t fully take place.

An effective MarTech solution goes beyond technology. A rich integration of data takes into account the data quality and transforms the data by enforcing data scrubbing and cleansing, and it results in data that can be relied on and MarTech that proves its ROI.

At MSIGHTS, we focus on a three-core process for data transformation:

This step in the process collects, imports, integrates, and fuses together any marketing or sales data sources. This brings all of your data into one place. It validates, structures, and models data upon integration for more efficient and scalable analytics downstream, and it helps you manage data operations.

This step unifies or transforms data by normalizing, enriching, harmonizing, and classifying data with cloud management tools. This makes your data actionable and ready for analysis. This means you can manage all your media and creative details directly in MSIGHTS. It creates data rules to auto-populate data into key data groupings. This sets aliasing to automap for future data integrations, and it creates custom metrics and attributes on the fly.

Exchanging delivers cleansed, fused, user-ready datasets ready to connect to any tool. This allows you to focus on analysis and action. You can access Exchange with a variety of tools and connection options, and create custom views to fuel advanced analytics.

The difference between data integration 1 and 2 is the difference between completing one (connect) of those processes instead of all 3 (connect, unify, and exchange). Option 1 may be a quick and easy fix, but it has a low value added. Option 2 provides consistent, scalable, and predictable data.

This is what leads to true data transformation and a MarTech solution that proves its ROI by interconnecting fragmented technology platforms.

Our proprietary tools streamline and automate key process areas so that all marketing data is reporting and analysis-ready for your marketing team and agency partners. This process allows us to:

• Fuse data sets to create metric categories for more streamlined calculations.
• Structure data so the output is predictable, flexible, and organized.
• Classify custom groupings not in original source data for proactive data reporting.
• Normalize data to make it consumable and reportable.

The process of becoming a data-driven marketing organization can seem long and full of hurdles. But the right partner and the right MarTech solution can knock down those hurdles so you can get on to making high-impact decisions with reliable and transformed data. If you are interested in learning more about the importance of investing in the right MarTech solution read our guide on a plan for investing in marketing technology below. 

* http://ascend2.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Ascend2-Marketing-Technology-Trends-Report-181101.pdf