Strategic Systems International
Amplifying Data Integration with Industry Knowledge

Strategic Systems International (SSI) is a specialized advanced analytics and software development firm that provides data integration expertise. They develop cost-effective and custom designed solutions to integrate, consolidate, synchronize, and distribute data originating from disparate sources. Their mature methodology is based on 25+4 years of custom solution delivery.

Having started as an asset optimization and analytics consulting firm in the Chicago area by alumni of University of Chicago and Northwestern University, the company’s 25+ year DNA is rooted in data. With extensive experience in advanced analytics and data mining, SSI goes beyond simply developing software solutions. They help their customers turn numbers into meaningful insights. “Using a combination of data science, software engineering, and analytics, we create solutions that make data accessible, meaningful, and insightful,” explains Humayun Latif, VP-Technology at SSI.

Most companies in the data integration landscape are focused solely on data analytics or software engineering. What gives SSI a unique position in this space is that they have expertise in both fields. Not only do they provide software solutions that remove complexity from data management, but they also help their clients better understand and utilize their data.

SSI is focused on serving clients in specific segments, including financial services, healthcare, Internet of Things, Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors, and industrials. By focusing on certain domains, they have a better idea of the typical problems faced by those clients. The industry experience they bring, in addition to their technical expertise, helps to set SSI apart from their competition. “Rather than offering generic business intelligence and software development, we have invested time and resources in specializing in select domains and sectors.”

One of the challenges that companies face today is the quality of their data. Data integration tools are useful only if there is accurate data. SSI implements processes in their solutions to help identify the data and verify its quality. Latif states, “We work with data providers to make sure the data is accurate, complete, and timely. This aspect is often ignored.

We work with data providers to make sure the data is accurate, complete, and timely

Sometimes you have perfectly accurate data, but it’s not there on time, and it becomes useless.”

Before developing a solution, SSI starts with a firm understanding of each customer’s knowledge and needs to design optimal models based on specific workflows, strategy, requirements, and previous project experiences. With their extensive understanding of the domain, they study the nature and availability of the data sources to develop creative business intelligence tools.

SSI’s solutions in the data integration space include SmartSync and SmartData which are both used in their data integration exercises to manage relationships and data integrity. SmartSync works to define sources, databases or spec sheets, and maps them to a target. SmartData is a data health tool that ensures the validity of the data and continues to monitor it long term.

One of SSI’s success stories involves the work they did with a Fortune 500, financial technology company. This company provides their clients with access to live market data. Their products are based on collecting data from hundreds of sources around the world on a daily and millisecond basis. They were constantly adding new data sources to their offerings and were challenged by writing new custom code every time. SSI partnered with them to develop a data integration platform with core baseline services that could be used for each new data source. With slight configurations of the platform, SSI generalized the process of integrating new data sources, eliminating redundant and unnecessary work and increasing the capacity for new data sources tenfold.

Looking to the future, SSI has recently started expanding in the UK market, and is exploring other European markets. They are also investing in and developing tools that incorporate machine learning and artificial intelligence. As they continue to evolve, SSI plans to make their custom data-driven solutions more accessible and lower the cost of build by bringing unique platforms and tools for rapid deployment.