Enhance Data Reliability With TARGIT's End-to-End Solution
In today's digital age, businesses heavily rely on an array of IT systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Dealer Management System (DMS), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. These systems are integral to operations, and when any one of them is not accessible, organizations face significant disruptions and even potential collapse.
Businesses may opt to protect their information via offsite backups and similar data redundancy efforts. However, while these processes ensure a copy of the source data stays safe from most threats, they often don’t offer an easy way to access or manipulate that data while the main system is offline.
So, how can businesses ensure their data is available in a separate secure location that won't be impacted by source system outages? Enter: Business Intelligence.
Business intelligence (BI) solutions and the dedicated data warehouses (DWH) they use to store data are primarily designed to enhance decision-making and operational efficiency.
However, in this article, we explore an additional benefit of BI and DWH solutions: improving data reliability across core IT/business solutions. By hosting BI and DWH separately from critical business systems, organizations can store and access their data from a secure data warehouse in a usable format, even if their DMS, ERP, or other source systems go down.
With the right BI solution, teams aren’t just accessing actionable business insights in their daily work, they’re also investing in an insurance policy that can keep business running during a crisis.
The Importance of Data Reliability
Lessons from Recent Crises
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the business value of automation and virtual tools. However, it also underscored the vulnerabilities associated with over-reliance on these technologies. In fact, ransomware increased by 435% in 2020 compared to 2019 (*Source (S) 1), and cybersecurity breaches increased by 68% in 2021 (*S2).
Even as we adjust to life post-pandemic, more technology integration has opened the door to more threats. An ever-growing number of cyberattacks has proven the need for enhanced data reliability across industries:
- In 2023, 46% of car dealers experienced a cyberattack that resulted in a negative financial or operational impact (*S3)
- 61% of manufacturing and production organizations reported an increase in cyberattacks since 2021 (*S4)
- 44% of global ransomware attacks in 2020 targeted municipalities (*S5)
Beyond Traditional Backups
Today, data reliability means much more than having a backup. Most companies depend on vital IT systems to the extent that any downtime can cause severe disruption — including loss in potential revenue and unexpected business expenses.
In an era where digital crime is prevalent and bad actors are exceptionally cunning, companies must prepare for scenarios where they might lose access to their critical business systems, potentially for extended periods of time. It’s essential that they proactively plan for how they'll keep the business running if and when disaster strikes.
Traditional backups are an essential part of this, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. Threats can target entire infrastructures and massive software providers, affecting entire industries and restricting data access indefinitely. Therefore, businesses need creative solutions to access data in a readable and structured way, even when vital source systems are down. BI helps by visualizing data in a new form, making it usable for daily operations.
How to Use BI and DWH for Redundancy and Data Reliability
Data Warehouses to Consolidate Vital Information
Most companies work with various source systems (e.g., ERP, DMS, CRM, etc.), many of which are critical for running their business and, ultimately, survival. A practical approach to enhancing data reliability is using a system that can consolidate and store data from various key source systems in a single, separate location. A BI solution with a connected data warehouse can serve this purpose. It not only improves decision-making and efficiency through automated reporting and analytics but also adds value by providing uninterrupted access to data.
BI as a Temporary Life Support System
When it comes to data reliability and disaster recovery, a BI solution should be seen as a form of life support. The data stored within its connected data warehouse can keep the business alive during critical times.
Data warehouses offer several benefits to daily BI and analytics operations. They improve an organization’s data consistency and quality and enable historical data analyses. What’s more, they safely store data from all business systems, which users can access whether or not primary source systems are up and running.
By storing data outside the main infrastructure, BI and DWH systems become an additional lifeline that provides continuous access to vital data. This separation ensures that if either one or more of the source systems or the BI and DWH face issues, the business can still operate. Ideally, both systems run simultaneously for optimal performance, but having them decoupled ensures business continuity during disruptions.
For example, if you run an equipment or automotive dealership, your BI solution can provide you with the latest operational data, such as:
- Month-to-date sales data, such as sales margin, breakdowns by branch and representative, inventory data, and revenue generated in the sales department.
- On-hand parts with bin locations, including details such as branch number, vendor, part number, description, bin location, on-hand quantity, and list price.
- Open work-in-progress (WIP) orders, which include branch number, customer number, work order number, stock number, description, parts total, labor total, and total WIP.
BI as a Complement to Core Business Systems
It's important to note that BI solutions are not a replacement for the main systems but a complementary asset. In addition to BI’s main purpose, it also provides the information needed to support daily operations as a side benefit, so businesses can keep their doors open in challenging times.
This redundancy serves as mitigation and data support for interim processes, helping businesses survive the days until access to core systems is restored. While BI solutions and data warehouses can also be targeted by outside threats, having them as part of a diversified redundancy plan makes an organization’s IT infrastructure more resilient.
Disaster Recovery Planning
Effective disaster recovery plans must cover a range of scenarios, from partial system outages to weeks-long full-scale ones. They should also be diverse and include multi-point protection plans that leverage BI solutions in combination with best practices for employees to maintain business operations during such times. The goal is to create efficient disaster recovery plans that minimize costs and resources while maximizing business continuity.
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Integrate BI into Your Data Redundancy Strategy
As businesses continue to face digital threats and infrastructural vulnerabilities, multi-point data redundancy strategies will become non-negotiable. Companies must develop comprehensive disaster recovery plans that maximize daily efficiency while protecting data across their core systems, potentially within a BI and DWH solution that is hosted separately from business systems like ERP, DMS, and CRM.
At TARGIT, we offer BI solutions with hosted data warehouses on-premises, in the cloud, and in combined hybrid setups to streamline customers’ analytics operations and protect their most valuable asset – their data. Our solutions provide enhanced reporting and data analysis, consistent data access, and robust security to support essential business operations while saving time and resources.
Use TARGIT to combine all your data inside automated reports and interactive dashboards that equip your entire team with the information they need to make timely, informed decisions. Plus, improve business continuity and data reliability by storing data from your DMS, ERP, CRM, and more in a separately hosted data warehouse that you can access even if source systems go down or experience a cyber-attack.
Contact our team today to learn more about our BI solutions and how we can help you enhance daily analytics tasks while protecting your data and minimizing business downtime.
