Organizations are losing out on data-driven decision-making opportunities when data stays in the data warehouse. While business intelligence solutions can surface insights from these data sets, it often reaches team members too late to be used for daily business operations. Reverse ETL empowers organizations to increase the value of their data warehouses through operationalization. Learn how this can transform the way companies use data and insights. 

Table of Contents

  1. Benefits of an Operationalized Data Warehouse
  2. Challenges of Operationalization 
  3. What Is Reverse ETL?
  4. How Reverse ETL Solves Operationalization Challenges
  5. Start Operationalizing Your Data Warehouse with Integrate.io

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Benefits of an Operationalized Data Warehouse 

Some organizations may wonder why they should go through the trouble of operationalizing data warehouses. Here are the benefits of using this approach for data-driven decision-making. 

  • Creating an enhanced customer view: How many applications contain customer information? Customer relationship management tools, customer contact platforms, social media management solutions, order systems, and more have different parts of customer information. They are centralized in the data warehouse and provide greater visibility when the information moves back into applications. 
  • Delivering updated data to systems of record: The most up-to-date information improves many decisions. For example, if a customer calls about a product they just purchased, knowing exactly what they need help with speeds up the resolution time and improves the customer experience. 
  • Eliminates inefficient business processes: Team members make many decisions daily for business operations. Needing to load a separate dashboard or business intelligence tool adds a lot of wasted time to their day. An operationalized data warehouse keeps critical insights in the systems where decisions are made. 

Challenges of Operationalization 

Implementing data warehouse operationalization is best done with a tool designed for that purpose. A unique tool is most appropriate because of the scale of the data and the number of applications in use. For example, manually connecting all the systems of record to the data warehouse may require significant custom work with APIs. On top of the initial configuration, developers also need to maintain these connections and make required changes. This project would significantly impact their time and resources, especially at organizations that use dozens or hundreds of different applications. 

For organizations without enough in-house development resources, they need to either recruit more team members or work with a service provider. Both prospects are expensive and may not be feasible within the company’s budget. 

What Is Reverse ETL?

Reverse Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) solutions focus on connecting the data warehouse and the systems of record back together. While traditional ETL tools center on moving data into the data warehouse, reverse ETL changes the flow so it goes in the other direction. If the data needs to go through a transformation process before it’s usable in the destination application, this technology can standardize the format and make other necessary changes. 

With this data pipeline infrastructure, the data warehouse is a centralized source of truth for every system in the organization. This configuration can improve the speed, accuracy, and completeness of the information. 

How Reverse ETL Solves Operationalization Challenges 

The biggest benefits of using a reverse ETL solution for data warehouse operationalization include: 

  • Simplifying connectivity between data warehouses and applications: Setting up integration between the data warehouse and the destination application is as simple as a few clicks. Since these connectors are built into the reverse ETL tool, organizations don’t need to go through a complicated configuration process to move the data back out. 
  • Improving data governance for complex data pipelines: Creating and maintaining data governance policies on complex data pipelines can be a challenge without full visibility into the connections between systems. By using reverse ETL solutions, companies can see exactly how data is moving from the data warehouse into daily business applications. 
  • Saving development time and resources: The development team can sit back and let the reverse ETL tool handle data integration back into the applications, rather than becoming involved with time-consuming custom API projects. They can spend that time optimizing data pipelines and creating other essential software for the company. 
  • Increasing data visibility in systems of record: Workers now have more information available to make decisions, as they can see data from multiple systems in their primary business tools. This functionality empowers workers to make more informed decisions, faster. 

Start Operationalizing Your Data Warehouse with Integrate.io

Don’t lose out on insights that could transform daily business operations. Integrate.io offers a comprehensive cloud-based data pipeline tool that simplifies ETL and Reverse ETL processes. Contact us to learn more about our platform’s user-friendly features and hundreds of built-in integrations, or see it for yourself with a 14-day demo