Enterprise data integration is the process of combining data from various resources for obtaining certain enterprise needs. This also includes the sharing of information among various business applications. Today, enterprise data integration is a widely practiced method by all companies and business groups, irrespective of their status, for managing their company resources. For Internet-linked marketers and service providers, these practices become much more important.

The advantages of enterprise data integration involves quick data delivery and data sharing; reduction in time expenditure in capturing data; elimination of data accumulation and duplicate data entry; saving of both time and capital needed for data entry, report preparing and printing; increased customer satisfaction through better customer data integration and customer contact; better product/service marketing; real time data availability; enhancement in sales force automation (SFA); and most of all simplification of all procedures.

Enterprise data integration includes a range of techniques such as EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), EII (Enterprise Information Integration) and ETL (Extract-Transform-Load), MDI (Master Data Management) and CDI (Customer Data Integration). The SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) can also be considered as a data integration technology. The main processes involved in enterprise data integration are data consolidation, data federation and data propagation.

Enterprise data integration solutions are data processing systems, which are capable of accessing multiple databases in tandem, providing real-time meaningful information and of producing accurate results on demand. These solutions put right information in right places like, data warehouses, data marts and consolidation repositories, with out any human help. These solutions are powered by data integration software programs and specific communication tools.

There are mainly five levels in an enterprise data integration solution as, enterprise portals or user interfaces, collaboration tools, business process management systems, enterprise applications integration level and lastly enterprise information integration level. The user interfaces may vary widely with companies such as point of sale systems, bookkeeping systems and payment processing solutions.

A perfect enterprise data integration solution will eliminate data latency, data pollution and false data. It must be capable of obtaining data from all company resources and data formats like from spread sheets, from graphs and pictures and from other application repositories. The data integration solution must provide all wanted information from any field, marketing, operational or sales, on demand.

Enterprise data integration requires the automation of all data works. Large sized companies and corporations now have their own data integration centers, which automates all information related practices. These data management centers/departments will design tools and will create best practices to help corporations integration architecture. But for medium and small sized companies creating one department for data integration is difficult. Thus for fulfilling this need, many enterprise data integration service/software providers came in to existence.

Before implementing any enterprise data integration system, a company must design a data integration architecture using all their data resources. Track all operating business unites with in your organization, give priorities to them. Heal as much as broken data links as possible, organize a source system - from which one can access resources, if possible crate information hubs, which deal with same type of information.

Today there are many data integration software vendors and service providers. You can find them by just searching on Internet. When you are looking for enterprise data integration software, look for one software vendor who offers customized software package for your company. Open source software packages are also available, which give you the chance to customize a program from a standard software program according to your tastes. If you are looking for an online service provider, make sure that the provider offer proper security to all your information. Also make sure that the service provider has enough data integrating capacity.