Data Standards
What is a Data Integration Standard? And, why should I care?
A Data Integration Standard is merely a specification that participants volunteer to adhere to in order to make their systems more interoperable with leading industry tools.
What that means is that, finally, FECs will be able to use best-in-breed tools for all aspects of their operations without worrying about interoperability, or a prohibitively expensive project in order to get their systems to work together.
It means that best-in-class client communication tools, Point of Sale systems, dashboard and reporting tools, cashless solutions, booking solutions, attraction software and systems made to run your operations, can all be made to work together seamlessly
Who are Participants In the Standard? What is ODISEI?
ODISEI is a (non-profit) organizing committee consisting of:
- FEC owners and operators
- Industry software providers
- System Integrators, &
- Industry Associations
Who have organized with the purpose of moving the industry toward open interoperability of the software and systems used to run the industry.
The Importance of Data Standards
Data standards are the key to breaking down data silos and creating interoperability, or the ability to exchange data between disparate systems and teams. Standards area also necessary to create data integrity, ensuring that data maintains its value and meaning, and remains usable consistent and accurate.
Software has both simplified and complicated our industry.
Importantly, software tools have made it comparatively trivial to collect large swaths of data on all aspects of our customers and how they interact with our organization. However, as those tools and touch points between our customers and our organizations expand, they are all too frequently building massive data stores forever locked away behind lock and key, unavailable to the eco-system of business tools we use to run the rest of our organization, or the tools we use to try and make sense of the blinding amount of data our tools are generating. The result is that we are figuratively drowning in data, without a drop of actionable information to drink.
Data in and of itself is oft-times unstructured, silo-ed, unassociated and disorganized information within the context of our organization.
- Our POS
- Our Website Analysis S/W
- Our Ecommerce Platform
- Our Online Ad platforms
- Our Game Play Data
- Our Email Communication Tools
- Our Text Messaging Tools
- Our Booking s/w
- Our cashless card systems
We’re invariably forced to make a decision between a vendor that claims to do everything or buying best-in-breed systems and attempting to patch them together through proprietary interfaces and impossibly opaque interface standards that can leave the best software integrators scratching their heads in abandoning projects in frustration.
The result is that we, as an industry, are precluded from taking advantage of the best-in-class tools that the “rest of the world” has ready access to.
Tools that let business owners and managers aggregate, see, and ACT on business insights.
Tools that let them automate repetitive marketing tasks so that their marketing people can get back to creating compelling messages to drive sales and brand awareness and out of the job of becoming computer and data scientists.
Is this because these industries have better or smarter business people? No. It’s because they have systems that adhere to world wide data standards that let them quickly and easily break down data silos and enjoy the leverage of getting a holistic and complete look at their business and customer base.