The March Madness Data Conundrum is Year-Long Madness for Businesses

Duke or North Carolina? Virginia or Gonzaga? What about a dark horse like Vermont or Bradley? This is the week every year where millions of Americans become college basketball experts and fill out a men’s and/or women’s bracket for year-long bragging rights and the highest respect from their peers. 

Every year there are those of us that spend hours crunching the numbers, analyzing those first-round matchups, only to see our brackets fall apart by the end of Day 1. And then a few weeks later, inevitably, Jay from Legal or Michaela from Accounting wins the pool after picking a favorite mascot in each matchup. 

But for those NCAA basketball aficionados that do, in fact, crunch the numbers and can reasonably understand the data behind the stats and seedings, how are you supposed to submit a final bracket when there is just so much information to sort through? What resources should you take advantage of, and which of the so-called “experts” should you ignore? 

For those in high money pools – ahem –  free pools, this can prove nothing short of an overwhelming task. So, you have each team’s offensive efficiency ratings memorized, but what does that even mean? Maybe you read an article about the next Steph Curry, but you already picked his team to lose in the first round. Now you’ve got to do your entire bracket over because that new breakout player is definitely going to carry his team to the Sweet 16. 

What if you had a way to integrate all the expert opinions and informational sites in order to view a report with the best information to fill out a bracket and own your office pool? Well, there are sites that get close:

1. KenPom provides the statistical probability that each tournament team has to advance to each round. 

2. NCAA.com, which uses the history of the NCAA tournament to determine the likelihood each seed defeats another seed. 

3. Perhaps the most in-depth statistical analysis for the NCAA tournament comes from FiveThirtyEight. Click on a team, and it will show you its path to the finals, with a percentage chance of that team winning each round.

These sources already integrate a variety of data sources and run statistical analyses so you have a better chance at a winning bracket.

In today’s fast-moving business world, having the most accurate and up-to-date information is just as important to a company. Modern organizations, similarly, rely on a variety of systems and applications to run their businesses, and aggregating information from all these sources can be overwhelming (much like NCAA bracketing!). That’s why integration technology is so critical for companies to understand their business data flows and make informed decisions.

Just like the millions seeking to make the best possible decision about their NCAA brackets, having all the necessary business data in an understandable, highly accessible manner gives companies the best chance to succeed. Connecting cloud and on-premise systems with applications in a reliable way means business data can be viewed from a single source of truth.

The modern approach for organizations involves choosing best-of-breed solutions that address specific business needs, which often require leading customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and EDI technologies. You want to leverage the best technology for your company – just like you want to leverage the best NCAA basketball resources – and your IT infrastructure should not limit what technologies you can use. Integration enables the freedom to use the systems you need for business success.

Whether you’re a food services distributor or a telecommunications provider, delivering a superior customer service experience will always be the focus, and these companies constantly seek new ways to better serve these customers. But organizations first must be easy to do business with, and they also have to meet the critical service-level agreements (SLAs) that keep customers happy.

An easy-to-use integration solution helps businesses tackle new integration requirements, deliver flexible connectivity options, and provide intuitive reporting required to better serve a customer base. Cleo Integration Cloud delivers these proven capabilities required to govern data, integrate applications, and give businesses a holistic look into the data flows powering your business ecosystem,

With smart integration, you can do business with confidence, and you can fill out that bracket with as much confidence as anyone can have when presented with the virtually impossible task of completing a perfect bracket.