Mid-market organizations face a persistent challenge today: managing critical data scattered across disparate business systems, often without dedicated IT support. This fragmentation creates significant hurdles, hindering their ability to provide timely insights and strategic value.
A firm specializing in modernizing FP&A processes recently faced this barrier. This firm helps companies establish a central source of truth using Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake, improving data quality and accelerating analytics.
However, as its CFO noted, the core challenge lay in the paradoxical need for finance teams to “become more technical to spend less time being technical.” He added that businesses often deal with a web of data sources. These include various accounting and ERP platforms like NetSuite, Intacct, Dynamics, and QuickBooks, as well as operational systems. All of them need to be centralized and prepared for analysis.
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Although relying on manual processes to sync data across these systems is common, it creates bottlenecks, increases redundant updates, and drastically reduces the time available for crucial analysis. As a result, with increasing demand for faster insights and growing data infrastructure needs, teams struggle to keep pace.
A Unified Solution: Cdata Sync and Microsoft Fabric
To tackle this challenge, the firm implemented CData Sync as its primary data integration platform for clients. This tool allowed structured data replication directly into Microsoft Fabric through CData’s dedicated OneLake connector. This combination fundamentally transformed how the financial firm’s clients manage and integrate data from multiple systems.
The implementation established automated data pipelines from diverse accounting and CRM platforms into Microsoft Fabric. Using a medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold layers), data was progressively structured and refined, ensuring quality and seamless integration with Microsoft’s Power Platform. This structured approach provided streamlined schema management and robust data transformation capabilities.
CData Sync’s flexibility was a key factor in the smooth implementation of the unified system. CData offered the connector set, underlying source data availability, structured replication engine, and flexibility that the firm sought in seeking a cost-effective ‘pure play’ solution that delivers maximum ROI. Thus, the synergy between CData Sync and OneLake offered a practical, achievable path to centralizing, organizing, and automating the data critical for the team.
Accelerated Value and Enhanced Visibility
The impact of this unified solution has been significant. For one healthcare customer of the firm, CData Sync and OneLake eliminated redundant manual updates, reducing effort by up to 88% and providing consistent, one-click data access. By removing manual extraction and centralizing data ready for use, the team automated recurring processes, freed up time previously spent on tedious tasks, and could invest more energy in critical thinking and analysis.
Clients also experienced a dramatic shift from monthly to daily reporting. This near real-time visibility, delivered via Power BI dashboards powered by the integrated data, fundamentally changed how organizations manage performance. A public affairs firm, for example, moved from monthly manual updates to daily sales reporting through Power BI, enabling faster, more informed decisions and even allowing analysis of ledger progression patterns for process improvements.
Across implementations, the solution has delivered substantial business impact, including:
- Significantly reduced implementation time for new processes.
- Enhanced data control and flexibility with owned granular data repositories.
- Improved scalability of central data sources.
- Enabled new value-added analyses through structured datasets.
- Increased finance team resilience to future system changes.
- Created a foundational layer for future AI initiatives.
The financial firm continues to leverage the power of CData Sync and Microsoft Fabric to help clients advance their data maturity. This scalable solution, combined with CData’s predictable connection-based pricing, provides cost-effectiveness as data volumes and tech stacks evolve, truly empowering mid-market organizations to move beyond data management and focus on strategic initiatives.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Integrating various platforms automates data synchronization. Leveraging the power of a unified system can eliminate manual updates across multiple systems. For example, replicating data from your ERP into Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake creates a reliable, central source of truth that automatically stays in sync, drastically reducing redundant effort and improving data consistency.
Move beyond month-end reporting bottlenecks. Structured data replication and transformation enable a shift from monthly cycles to near real-time visibility. Solutions like CData Sync achieve this through dashboards and analytics, allowing for proactive decision-making based on current business performance.
A unified platform provides standardized, granular data access. Gain seamless access to your data from diverse systems within a standardized data architecture in Microsoft Fabric. This eliminates data silos, provides a consistent view for analysis, and empowers organizations with the detailed information needed for deep dives and strategic planning.
