Should Enterprises Build or Buy Entity Resolution?
Adding high-quality entity resolution capabilities to enterprise applications, services, data fabrics or data pipelines can be a daunting task. Some organizations have invested millions of dollars and years of effort into developing algorithms for entity resolution, with teams sometimes exceeding 100 people. If you’ve attempted this yourself, you know that it’s not a trivial endeavor when building enterprise entity resolution.
But is there another option for enterprises that want to benefit from entity resolution? Until just a few years ago, the only commercial choice available was a complicated full stack system that could take months or years to deploy. Today, however, there are new commercial API solutions that allow organizations to quickly and easily add extremely accurate data matching and relationship detection capabilities to their enterprise systems in a capital-efficient way.
Building Entity Resolution is Expensive and Time Consuming
When deciding whether to build entity resolution capabilities yourself, or to utilize new, lighter-weight API options, we recommend that you consider your current investments, your team’s skillsets, and your desired results. If your current results are “good enough,” you don’t need new capabilities (e.g., real time, multi-lingual) and you’re not worried about becoming beholden to one or two in-house entity resolution experts, building your own solution might make sense. Otherwise, evaluating the speed of deployment, accuracy levels, economics and other benefits of using commercial APIs for entity resolution will likely reveal a more attractive option.
If you build it yourself, know what you are getting into. We estimate that organizations can easily spend about $1 million building technology that includes only 70 percent of the features and capabilities found in a state-of-the-art solution. Reaching 80 percent can cost $5 million, while 90 percent could cost $30 million or more, and you still won’t be state-of-the-art.
Should Enterprises Build Entity Resolution or Use an API?
Until recently, building your own entity resolution capabilities may have been your only option. But now, with a commercial API, you can add entity resolution to your enterprise application, service, data fabric or data pipeline with just a few lines of code.
A commercial API usually delivers a more rapid return on investment and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than building entity resolution yourself. It also will free up your in-house development resources to focus on more important projects, such as those that enhance your core strengths.
Deploying the Senzing Entity Resolution API is Fast and Easy
In the same way many enterprises license third-party payment processing or mobile communications capabilities, you can add industrial-strength entity resolution to your enterprise applications and data systems with the Senzing entity resolution API. Depending on the scope and scale of your project, you can deploy the Senzing API in just a few days to a few weeks.
With Senzing, you’ll get some of the most advanced, real-time data matching and relationship detection capabilities available. Our team of experts have decades of experience building software to solve some of the world’s most complex entity resolution challenges.
Senzing technology is highly accurate and scalable, operates with low latency, and sets itself apart from other solutions with its fast and easy integration of new data sources. Plus, with the Senzing API, all your data is safe and secure – you deploy all logic and data on premises or in your cloud environment, and no data flows to Senzing, Inc.
Building Entity Resolution Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore
Building it yourself is too expensive, takes too long, and is likely to produce inferior results that make your enterprise less competitive. With the Senzing API, you’ll get a faster time to value, higher-quality results and a lower TCO than with any other option. Plus, you can try it for free.
Discover the Potential of Senzing Technology
Schedule a time to meet with one of our entity resolution experts today. We’ll help you evaluate your specific requirements and determine if Senzing entity resolution is the best solution for your needs. If we don’t think we’re the best option for you, we’ll let you know that too.