Data integration can take up to 30-40% of total development time, complicating developers' workflows and compromising the reliability of data. Learn how a Data Hub integrated with a low-code platform can provide the ideal solution to build applications with always-available, up-to-date data.
Companies invest significant time and resources in integrating data dati during development of business applications, but often fail to fully leverage it for informed decision-making. This issue stems from a combination of technical, organizational, and strategic factors.
Business data is often distributed across silos, such as ERP systems, CRMs, legacy databases, or spreadsheets. This fragmentation makes accessing the right information at the right time challenging. Additionally, thelack of standardizationacross systems, with , with varying formats, structures, and logic, further complicates data usage.
Developers are often forced to spend a significant amount of timeretrieving, reconciling, and transforming dataThis process, which includes creating connections between systems, building custom APIs, and configuring data pipelines, requires advanced technical skills, considerable effort and ongoing maintenance to keep integrations functional.
Another complication arises the lack of real-time data: many systems rely on batch updates or manual synchronizations, leading to delays and producing outdated or incomplete data—unsuitable for applications requiring immediate insights.
Each new application adds further layers of complexity to the company’s data infrastructure. Even when data is integrated, it often lacks the context neededto generate actionable insights. Ambiguous field names, complex calculations, and inconsistent formats pose obstacles for developers, while business users require contextualized informationdirectly linked to the problems or opportunities at hand.
Without a clear and contextualized framework, seemingly significant data—such as a drop in sales—can be misinterpreted, especially if not compared to historical trends or market benchmarks. The combination ofmissing contextand and growing system complexity limits the value of generated insights, undermining the company’s ability to make effective, informed decisions.
The development of business applications increasingly revolves around data, but as previously highlighted, the integration and management of fragmented information across silos represent a significant challenge.
Developers must identify relevant data, understand itsoften complex context due to non-standard structures and logic, and integrate it by building connections and transformations that require time and advanced expertise.
In this context,A Data Hub is a centralized platformrepresent revolutionary opportunity. They combine the ability to unify and manage enterprise data with the simplicity and speed of low-code development, enabling the creation of data-driven applications without the technical complexities of traditional methods.
What is a Data Hub? A Data Hub is a centralized platform designed to simplify the access, discovery, and utilization of distributed data within an organization by leveraging metadata. Metadata provides a structured description of dataincluding its meaning, structure, relationships with other entities, and governance rules. Within a Data Hub, metadata helps developers and business users quickly understand the context of data, track its ownership, and manage access permissions. For example, metadata might describe the "Customer ID" field as a as a unique identifier in the CRM linked to transactions in an ERP system.
Integration with ow-code platforms further amplifies the value of a Data Hub, allowing developers to treat external data as if it were “local” to the application. This means that even if the data resides in external systemsit can be utilized in the application as if it were already integrated into its database. Metadata provides a clear interface for exploring and using data, enabling developers to query and use it directly within applications.
At WEGG, as consultants specialized in process digitalization, our goal is to ensure that developed applications not only support business operations but also deliver immediate knowledge for informed decision-making. For this reason, we avoid traditional solutions like ETL or complex integrations, focusing instead on development technologies that providesimple, direct, and contextualized access to enterprise data.
Sull’We’ve already discussed how low-code development how low-code development improves project efficiency compared to traditional methods. here as well, what is often overlooked is both the quality of data integration and the time required to ensure it. For this reason, we choose Mendix, a platform that combines the power of low-code with an integrated Data Hub.
A key feature of the Mendix Data Hub is its ability to use predefined connectorsto access data from external systems like ERP, CRM, cloud platforms, or legacy databases. These connectors not only facilitate direct access to data sources but, when integrated with the Data Hub,automatically catalog metadataand make contextualized information available for real-time use. This allows developers to treat external data as if it were localsimplifying integration and ensuring reliable and up-to-date applications.
When it comes to managing data based on manual or asynchronous updates, Mendix technology adopts an event-driven approach. With the management of business events, it’s possible to monitor changes in data or processes, triggering automatic actions and workflows. This ensures that applications remain aligned with ongoing business processes, eliminating inefficienciesand manual interventions.
We recommend adopting development practices that align with business evolution from the outsetSolutions like these, supporting the digitalization of processes, enable the creation of flexible and responsive systems capable of providing timely and actionable information for informed decisions.
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