Your employees are often looking at the same set of data in different applications.
Marketers might view leads in a marketing automation platform, sales might view them in a CRM; HR teams might track employee information in human resources information systems, and IT might track information in project management systems; finance teams Sales orders may be reviewed in the ERP system, while your customer-facing employees may review them in the CRM…
Displaying the same record types between applications is obviously essential, but the process of manually re-entering data within applications leaves employees vulnerable to errors that create data discrepancies between systems.
This can lead to misalignment and friction between functions, individual teams being misled into making poor decisions, and business-critical reporting becoming inaccurate. Given these consequences, it’s no surprise that poor data quality costs organizations millions every year.
Data synchronization neatly solves this problem because it virtually ensures that data across applications is consistent and accurate - assuming you're using an error-free source system.
To help you fully understand data synchronization , we'll continue to define it, look at common examples, explore its benefits, and share how to implement it.
Data synchronization definition
Data synchronization is the ongoing process of keeping record types the same between two or more systems. This can be done in real time, near real time or in batch.
Type of data synchronization
The synchronization process can occur in one of two ways:
One-way data synchronization
One-way synchronization is when changes in the source system cause changes in the downstream system, not the other way around.
To help illustrate this definition, let's use an example. Suppose you are using a CRM as the source system and an ERP tool as the downstream system, and decide to synchronize the following record types. Therefore, when a customer record, issue summary, or case number is modified in the CRM, the information in the corresponding record in the ERP will also change accordingly. However, the opposite situation does not affect CRM records.
Two-way data synchronization
Bidirectional synchronization is when changes in the source or downstream system cause changes in other systems.
Now, let's use the same example from before, but in the context of bidirectional synchronization. In this case, it doesn't matter which is the source and which is the downstream system. Whenever a change is made to a synchronized record in the CRM or ERP tool, the corresponding record in the other system is also changed.
Finally, although it is difficult to generalize, the data types that are synchronized are usually located in the master data set. It is also data that typically changes less frequently and is managed throughout its life cycle.
With this data synchronization definition in place, let's explore some common use cases.
Common data synchronization
We will illustrate the above points through several practical examples:
1. Synchronize employee data
The process of adding new employees to the system typically begins with adding them to a human resources information system; where information such as the employee's first and last name, email address, title, and hiring manager are added.
Let's say CRM is one of the downstream applications that requires employee information. You can build a one-way data synchronization so that whenever employee data changes in the data source, corresponding changes occur in the CRM. Instead, you can build a two-way data synchronization that behaves similarly to the above and allows changes in the CRM to also cause corresponding changes in the data source.
2. Synchronize event data
When two companies' products are closely intertwined, they may want to track issues in their respective incident management platforms; this way, each organization's teams can keep an eye on any issues and work to resolve any issues when appropriate.
You can create data synchronizations to align each company's ITSM tools with another company's. More specifically, you can build a two-way data sync so that whenever one company creates an event in its tool, the other company's tool also receives that event. This allows both teams to coordinate and resolve issues faster.
3. Synchronize customer data
Once new customers and their information are added to your CRM, this data may need to be made available in various other applications. These include customer success applications, reporting and analytics tools, marketing platforms, financial systems, and more.
While this often depends on the company and situation, customer data is generally better suited to bi-directional synchronization. Why? Because various functions performing activities in applications outside the CRM may discover information or encounter problems that need to be viewed by people working in their CRM.
For example, employees in the accounting department may have problems issuing invoices to customers. Using two-way synchronization, they will be able to create cases in the ERP system (highlighting the issue) and populate the cases into the CRM as well. There, sales reps can become aware of invoice issues and take action quickly.
Benefits of synchronizing data
Considering these use cases, and countless others, it’s no surprise that syncing data brings a host of benefits to businesses.
Data silos eliminated
Now, employees can access the data they need within the applications they work in, and they can avoid the tedious process of requesting access to that data, or worse, not even knowing the data exists.
Can prevent bulk data entry
The process of manually entering data isn't just unpleasant for employees. It can also lead to human errors that impact data quality, whether that means employees entering the wrong information or forgetting to enter it. In response, employees were forced to perform extensive rework, which prevented them from completing other business-critical tasks.
Data synchronization ensures that employees do not have to re-enter data across applications, and in doing so avoids the negative consequences mentioned above.
Can perform multiple data operations
These operations include creating records, updating records, and deleting any records.
By combining these operations across applications, data synchronization can deliver greater value to employees and the business.
Data can be synchronized in near real-time
While batch synchronization of data may be sufficient in some cases, near real-time synchronization is often very valuable for successfully executing business processes.
Real-time data synchronization enables sales and finance teams to collaborate more effectively to manage deals, product and customer support to resolve issues faster, and more.
Data synchronization challenges
Common challenges with data synchronization include scalability issues, security risks, and performance limitations.
Let's take a closer look at each question:
Scalability issues
Many methods of implementing and maintaining data synchronization are resource intensive. They require involvement and significant time investment from your developers, who need to focus on core product initiatives.
This can be difficult or even impossible since your organization may need to implement and maintain dozens, and ultimately hundreds, of data synchronizations.
Security Risk
The applications being connected and the resulting data synchronization flows may contain sensitive business-critical information.
If the third-party or in-house solutions you use to connect these systems and enable these synchronizations do not provide adequate security and governance controls, sensitive data can easily fall into the wrong hands and be used in ways that harm the business.
Performance limitations
While data synchronizations are obviously valuable, they only simplify the process of sharing information between applications. Nor do they provide the prescriptive guidance employees need to act on the data.
For example, if you synchronize cases in your CRM with incidents in your ITSM tool, your support team may not know how to respond immediately to those issues. Even if they do, their response may require them to take additional manually intensive steps, which prevents them from providing a quick solution.
How to sync data
Once you start syncing your data, you'll want to consider different solutions to help you achieve any synchronization.
Here's a breakdown of each solution:
1. Custom coding
This method relies on the developer using custom code to synchronize the data.
This approach is helpful because it allows you to avoid working with and relying on third parties. However, your engineers will have to devote significant time to implementing and maintaining these data synchronizations, taking them away from the other business-critical work they are uniquely suited to perform.
2. Native integration
This involves using an application's pre-built integration and data flow with another application.
This can be cost-effective, as the application vendor offering the integration may offer it at a low price or even include it in your subscription. Additionally, depending on the data synchronization you want to build, it may meet your requirements.
That said, there's a good chance the vendor doesn't offer out-of-the-box connectivity to all the apps you want to connect to. Even if they do, these integrations may not connect to the endpoints you need.
3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Software
RPA software allows you to synchronize data by essentially using software scripts or "bots" to copy and paste data between applications at the UI level.
This may meet your requirements in the short term, but may cause problems over time. For example, something as simple as changing the name of a specific field or object can be enough to break an integration. Even moving a field or object to another location in the UI can cause data synchronization to break. Additionally, “bots” require technical expertise to implement and maintain. Similar to custom coding, this makes RPA software difficult to scale.
4. Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
iPaaS can help you achieve data synchronization by integrating applications at the API level. This provides greater stability than UI-based integration because changes to one of the application's UIs do not cause data synchronization to be interrupted. Additionally, iPaaS offers high performance because the API allows you to achieve real-time or near-real-time data synchronization.
iPaaS solutions also typically offer a wide range of application connectors and automation templates, which can help your team quickly implement integrations without developer involvement.
It's worth noting that iPaaS providers can vary widely in terms of ease of use, the use cases they address, and the quality of support they provide, which means you'll need to evaluate your options carefully.
Use Datalink to synchronize data on a large scale
Datalink, the leader in enterprise application integration, provides a low-code/no-code platform that allows your teams to synchronize data without using developer resources, giving them the bandwidth to focus on other critical tasks field.
Additionally, our platform can perform synchronization through triggers using webhooks or polling; the former allows you to perform synchronization in real time when a trigger event occurs, while the latter allows you to perform synchronization in near real time at a predefined time cadence (e.g. every 5 minutes) Synchronize.
Data synchronization FAQ
Data synchronization can cause a series of problems. If you still have questions, we'll address more below.
Q: What is the difference between real-time synchronization and near-real-time synchronization?
These definitions are often subjective, but generally speaking, real-time involves synchronizing data between systems in milliseconds or single-digit seconds, while near-real-time can be measured in seconds or single-digit minutes. Meanwhile, batch synchronization can be performed over longer ranges of minutes (for example, every 30 minutes), or over hours or days.
Q: What is the difference between data synchronization and data backup?
Data backup involves taking snapshots of your data at a specific rhythm (such as daily snapshots), allowing you to restore it to the form it had during a specific time period. At the same time, data synchronization does not perform data backup because its goal is to keep the system in sync.
Q: What is the relationship between data integration and data synchronization?
The definition of data integration is fundamentally different from the definition of data synchronization.
Data integration involves obtaining data from various sources, validating the data (to eliminate redundancy and inaccuracies), transforming the data (to fit the data model used by the data warehouse), and then loading it into the data warehouse.
Once the data is in the warehouse, it can be synchronized with downstream systems in near real-time, or using a batch processing approach.
Q: Are data synchronization and data replication the same thing?
Data synchronization and data replication are often mistakenly considered to be the same part. However, unlike data synchronization, data replication is typically used to back up complete data sets with the goal of maintaining a high level of data availability.
Q: What types of data synchronization tools exist?
There are a range of data synchronization solutions available. This includes integration platforms as a service, which connect applications through their application programming interfaces (APIs); RPA software, which uses bots to mimic human tasks at the UI level; and (as mentioned earlier) enterprise automation platforms, which can be integrated through APIs your applications and automate your workflow end-to-end.
Q: What is asynchronous data?
It's just when a record type in one system has different information than the same record type in another system.
This may be due to a lack of synchronization between the system's record types. However, it is more likely that the synchronization cadence cannot adapt shortly after the change occurs. For example, once a customer record is adjusted in CRM, the same customer record in the ERP system is now an out-of-date version and may not be updated for several weeks (or when the next synchronization process is run). Cases such as this highlight the need for real-time or near-real-time synchronization.
Q: What is database synchronization?
Database synchronization follows the definition of data synchronization, except that it only applies to databases. In other words, it is the ongoing process of keeping record types the same between two or more databases.