The main function of payment processors is the processing and routing of transactions from the payer to the recipient. But the business is developing and its needs are no longer limited to basic processing. The more a business scales, the more data it needs to process.
Business Data Components
Payment processors perform many business tasks, providing payment acceptance, coordinating all possible settlements between the issuing bank, business, cardholder and acquiring bank. They authenticate payment information, move the transaction through the processing network, send a billing statement, disburse funds to the merchant and so on. All this is converted into data, which often takes up a lot of storage space if they are lying dead weight.
Don’t forget about the data in the business elements, such as human resources management, product databases, customer relationship management (CRM) software and many other business systems containing various data about the state of your business.
In addition, using various integrations, the business can reach a global audience. Most businesses focus on such complexities as integration itself and taking into account a variety of customer preferences of a global audience, including currencies, the type of payment acceptance, the language of the checkout page, and so on. These are undoubtedly important elements that subsequently cause one particular difficulty – accounting for all payment information.
The value of consolidation
So, a business needs to process and store a huge amount of data. This data is valuable in itself, but if a business has the ability to collect it from disparate sources into a single repository, combine it and use it for analytics, you can go to a completely different level.
Using a payment system with consolidation, you do not have to manually combine information from many different data touchpoints or databases, spending additional human, time and financial resources on this. You will get a simple and well-organized access to data, while avoiding duplication and errors in the data and reducing the number of storage sites and repositories.
The importance of data consolidation can be summarized in the following terms:
- cost reduction
- increased security
- control of information assets
- enhancement of decision-making
If everything is clear with the first three points, then the last one is worth special attention. If you accumulate and analyze all the data, you are tracking the development of your product. For example, by collecting a report on payments, you understand the most preferred payment methods among your customers, see what problems arise at each stage of payment in order to look for solutions. Data consolidation allows you to track performance and, based on this data, make changes that will reduce churn, increase conversion and help you scale your business.
What is the consolidation process?
The data consolidation process consists of the following steps:
- selection of data sources
- data quality assessment
- analysis to identify and extract most salient features
- restructuring the analyzed information, clearing of redundant information
- packaging of restructured information
- transfer to the data warehouse
- presenting to business
The consolidation procedure is based on the ETL process (extraction, transformation, loading). The ETL process solves the tasks of extracting data from different types of sources, converting them to a form suitable for storage in a certain structure, as well as uploading to the appropriate database or data warehouse. If the analyst has doubts about the quality and informative value of the source data, then, if necessary, they can use procedures for quality assessing, data cleansing or enrichment, which are also integral parts of the data consolidation process.
We can help
For business, it is necessary to take into account the growing volume and complexity of data. Data consolidation facilitates the smooth execution of business operations, and also allows you to have a clearer view of the collected data. Using analytics, you can understand your audience, improve your products or services, and maximize returns.
Rainex is a billing and subscription management platform that allows you to fully manage payments and subscriptions in one tool. In addition to flexible set up of pricing plans, integrations with multiple payment gateways, multilingual notifications and invoices, and much more, Rainex offers complete analytical data on all billing and subscription management processes. Analytical dashboards, automatically generated based on all customer data, payments, notifications, and so on, will help you more closely monitor all the processes of your business and scale it more efficiently.
To learn more, sign up for a product demo. We will be happy to tell you about us and answer any questions.
