How to Simplify Your Data Integration by Moving to the Cloud

Are you struggling to integrate your enterprise data sources into an efficient, centralized location for reporting and analysis? You’re not alone—so was one of our recent clients until Datavail gave them a helping hand.

 
Datavail’s client is one of the world’s leading manufacturing and services companies, with more than 60,000 employees across 200 countries and territories, and with products that 2 billion people use every day. The client’s primary impetus for working with Datavail was the need for a singular view of their customer relationship management (CRM) data; each regional branch was using their own CRM software, creating a fractured ecosystem that lacked a global, unified perspective.

Moving to the Microsoft Azure Cloud for CRM

As an existing Microsoft customer, the client used the Microsoft Azure cloud for this project. Datavail was the ideal Azure cloud migration partner, with Microsoft Gold Partner status, copious years of working remotely and across time zones, and a 24/7 hybrid onshore/offshore business model.

Datavail helped the client adopt Microsoft Azure cloud technologies such as:

• Azure Data Factory: Microsoft’s cloud-based solution for ETL (extract, transform, load), integrating data from unique sources and storing it in a single centralized target location.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365: Microsoft’s cloud-based CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, leveraging artificial intelligence to deliver smarter business insights.

In addition, Datavail helped the client switch their use of ETL software from a proprietary tool with a steep learning curve, to KingswaySoft, which uses standard SQL commands and has connectors with many data sources and targets, including Microsoft Dynamics 365.

The client now enjoys lightning-fast ETL processes and marked improvements to the quality of their enterprise data. By applying Datavail’s Azure data migration expertise, the client’s data migration workloads—which once took 8 to 10 hours to run—are now half as long or shorter. Datavail also helped the client automate their post-load validation (PLV) processes to make sure data was correctly and successfully migrated during ETL.

From working with Datavail, the client has realized benefits including: 

• A unified CRM system in the Microsoft cloud.
• Dramatically faster data migration times.
• Simplified ETL stored procedures.
• Uncovering hidden data tables that were part of the client’s ETL workflows.
• Automating the post-load validation process.
• Completing more than 1,000 agile tasks and fixing hundreds of bugs for the client.
• Building a robust, complete set of documentation and templates for future collaborations with IT managed services partners.