002 What is Data Integration? By integrating disparate and unconnected data sources, marketers can get a complete view of the customer journey. They can integrate everything from campaign and budget records to analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) data to paint a full picture of their marketing performance. These combined datasets unlock insights that aren’t available in siloed datasets. With this information, marketers can optimize their spending to make future campaigns more efficient and effective. Data integration, however, isn’t easy. Marketers must wrangle facts and figures with a future-proof mentality. This is a complicated task that requires the right people, processes, and products to tackle three main phases—discovery, retrieval, and harmonization. In this guide, we’ll explore each phase and the requirements to be successful. Discovery To integrate your data, you first need to understand what your data looks like and where it’s stored. This is the purpose of the discovery phase. Each source requires its discovery process, in which all data fields (such as geography, cadence, and campaign attributes) must be identified and labeled. The discovery phase requires coordinating with stakeholders from across the organization. You must engage each channel owner to properly analyze the data in detail and create a data roadmap, ensuring that all perspectives—from top-line leadership to on- the-ground analyst validation—are covered. In order to successfully optimize your ROI, you need to know your data. This requires: People: • Solution engineers/data analysts to data architect • Technical project/program managers to oversee the process • Channel owners to relay information about the sources Process: This discovery phase typically takes 1–3 months per project (depending on the amount of data). You must also get validation from all stakeholders (leadership down to analysts) which is a variable time commitment. Product: • Data providers to collect various data extracts • Data architecture to design the overall plan for integration Kwanzoo