You surely have questions about your business strategy: you may have wondered if it’s solid, if your company’s generated data is really useful, or maybe you're afraid of the advantages competition may have through confidential processes you would like to be in the know of. In this article you’ll discover that answers to these questions are in front of you: you’ll learn why ETL is the key for a good Business Intelligence in order to keep your company at the forefront by discovering the real value of the information it produces.
There is a great variety of processes which involve moving, modifying and transforming data but, particularly, ETL enables using holistic techniques to get the most of your business information.
ETL means extract, transform and load, and it refers to any type of process done to data involving those terms; they’re usually performed to move, migrate and analyze data from different sources and to store it in any database for a good use.
This process is the main source of information regarding the state of any business’ development, since it is the preview of a broadened overview of movements done, acquisition and retention of new clients, improvement or worsening of sales, staff turnover and its possible causes, among other business management data. It also provides knowledge about movement tendencies and predictions, thus facilitating good decision making.
ETL meaning.
The information stored in one or various databases (as the term indicates) is extracted from its origin; during this stage, data must be homogenized in a single structure since it tends to have different formats while being stored in different places, which ends up being a difficulty to achieve good data integrity (explained further). This first structuring phase takes place in specific platforms by using algorithms as well as specialized pipelines which take said information and analyze it to determine its origin in order to modify it and achieve its unification.
Another essential step during this process is to identify data volume to determine what type of extraction will be needed: if it’s either incremental or full extraction.
The most important thing to consider when extracting is to intervene as little as possible in everyday business processes, therefore, extractions are usually carried out during hours of little to no activity in the initial source.
Once the information is extracted and homogenized, a cleaning, ordering and deep restructuring stage is reached to modify data as needed: formats and values are changed according to objectives. There are four types of transformations:
These transformations can be performed within an ETL tool or can be carried out by teams of data scientists, data engineers, and data analysts using languages such as Python or SQL.
Before any transformation, it is important to define some business guidelines for data modification, which can be:
Some examples of transformations are:
Once data is transformed according to its future use, it will be transferred to a new destiny, which can be a database, a data mart or data warehouse previously defined to make the most out of it. There are two ways of loading data:
ETL process.
Implementing an ETL process can be quite complex if the system is poorly designed: this can result in serious operational problems. To prevent your data from losing its integrity, at Arkon Data we have a team of data scientists and data engineers who can advise you on how to develop a process like these with our easy-to-use platform.
It is super common to underestimate this process as just another tool within Data Management that only organizes information. In the last year, we’ve seen its evolution by becoming essential in the development of data integration. In general, this refers to data profiling, data quality, data operational processes, transformation services (CDC, SCD, etc.), real-time access, metadata management, among others.
A good data integration allows creating a complete and profound outlook about a business's current state: ETL can boost any organization’s development.
One of the most common dilemmas inside businesses is how to save money and time. Companies usually carry out their movements and coding manually, but, by implementing an ETL, many processes are automated, thus reducing execution times and costs by doing so. Other advantages include:
The term business intelligence was previously used to define the exchange of information between organizations. This meaning evolved to signify the use of computing models for better decision making.
Business Intelligence is a series of practices and ideas within Business Management that looks for the use of data as pieces of value to obtain insights from it.
It involves data extraction from different sources, transforming it for query, reporting, analysis, and uploading it to a centralized data warehouse or other repository.
There are different processes within Business Intelligence, some of them are:
In some way, the previous processes can be an extension of an extraction, transformation and/or loading process. An ETL process is at the core of Business Intelligence systems, since it helps to create predictions about future trends, marketing dynamics, variations between supply and demand, among other variables which are of great importance for BI: ETL is essential to gain a consolidated view of data which drives the practice of making better and more informed decisions.
Relation between ETL with BI.
There are plenty of businesses that overlook having a data intelligence strategy based on ETL; these organizations usually have unstructured information with no consideration for the benefits optimized information brings. By applying a well founded business intelligence by using ETL, you will be able to achieve the following:
Now that you have a bigger picture of how important these tools are, we can conclude by saying that:
At Arkon Data we have a complete team of data scientists and data engineers who analyze and find the best solutions for managing your business processes and data flows, all with the implementation of algorithms and advanced analytics. Through our platform, you’ll be able to create BPMN diagrams with an easy-to-use inteface. You’ll achieve a good business intelligence strategy with us by using ETL and data integration.