If you own a business, are interested in starting your own business, or work in a business department, you’re likely familiar with data. Data integration, transformation, and loading are three vital parts of finding data from sources and getting it in the proper place like a data warehouse or hub.
While collecting data from sources is one of the first steps, it’s important that your company can actually use it to change parts of your business. This is known as operational analytics and is the action-oriented part of data analytics. Think of it this way. You can look at data all day and even organize it, but until you take the information you learn and put it to use changing your marketing strategy, customer service, or finances, you’re wasting your time.
So, putting data to use is important. But how do you get from collecting data in a warehouse to taking action? The key lies in
Reverse ETL. This is what helps close the gap and get you into the hands of actual departments that can use data. This guide breaks down everything you need to know about reverse ETL. Let’s take a closer look at some of the facts surrounding it and how you can use it for your business.
Reverse ETL: The Basics
First, let’s break down what reverse ETL is and how it works. In short, Reverse ETL solves the problem of moving data from the warehouse and putting it in the hands of actual users that can do something about it. Here’s how the process works.
Reverse ETL is, in essence, the opposite of ETL. ETL stands for extract, transform, load. This is the process companies have used for years to copy data from various systems and put this data in one central warehouse. So, reverse ETL does the opposite. It takes the data already in the warehouse, copies it, and puts it in the hands of relevant departments.
For example, reverse ETL would take consumer trend data and send it to the marketing team or the CRM. This data could be as simple as telling the marketing team that a customer has already purchased an item, which helps marketing change their tactics and advertise a different product. Reverse ETL allows teams to take action, which is the most important part of using data. Let’s break this down further below.
How Reverse ETL Transforms Data Integration
Data integration is the process of collecting data from various sources and storing it all in one central warehouse. This is an excellent first step, but unless teams are able to access this data, they won’t be able to use it. Reverse ETL changes all this. It enables operational analytics, leads to better data automation, and it’s relatively easy to build or buy.
Enables Operational Analytics
Operational analytics is the process of taking data acquired in the warehouse and putting it to action! This is a vital step to improve your business and actually put your knowledge to use. However, without reverse ETL, this step may go very slowly. Here’s why.
Imagine all the unique data for your business from various sources and departments is housed in one singular data hub. While this is convenient, it can be very difficult to access the data in this hub. It can also be time consuming and take valuable time that your CRM, sales team, employee managers, and marketing team may need.
Reverse ETL solves this problem by sending out the data that’s relevant to each department directly to them from the data warehouse. It does this by copying the data with the ETL method and sending it to various systems. Now, your departments can practice operational analytics firsthand and put the data to use!
Easy To Build Or Buy
Operational analytics is important. Without it, you’re wasting your time with data collecting and integration. So, finding a reverse ETL tool that works for you is vital!
When it comes to reverse ETL tools, should you build your own or buy one? Every business is different, so it’s important to find what works for you. Building will require a data engineer that has the time and resources to spend on this. Buying can be a beneficial alternative as you can find reverse ETL tools that are high quality and work in minutes.
The Best Reverse ETL Tools Available
Finding the best reverse ETL tools available isn’t always easy, and not every tool is made equal. Our tool is easy to use, gets working in minutes, contains a large integrations catalog of over 40 integrations to move data from systems, and works better than building your own reverse ETL tool. Try it out today!
