Self-service ETL technology has brought a paradigm shift in the way companies use their customers’ data and deliver the value they’ve been promised. It enables business users (with minimal technical expertise) to extract, transform, and load data into data lakes or warehouses. The stored data is later analyzed to make informed business decisions and deliver value to customers.
Self-service powered ETL solutions enable non-technical business users to implement new customer data connections in minutes instead of weeks or months – securely and easily. Users can point and click through easy screens and utilize machine learning and security protocols to onboard and manage multi-dimensional, complex data and stream it in real-time to execute modern-day business transactions. This frees IT teams from tedious and thankless custom coding and EDI mapping and enables them to focus on other high-productive tasks.
Let’s delve into the benefits promised by self-service ETL solutions for our better understanding.
1. Brings Non-technical Business Users to the Forefront
Traditional ETL solutions require IT teams to develop and maintain the scripts that keep the data flowing. Every time there is a change in schemas or APIs, the data engineers need to update their scripts to accommodate the changes. That results in downtime and high operational overheads. The step of creating data mappings to enable data transformation presents another challenge. IT integrators need to create EDI mappings, which is a time-consuming process. There is also an increase in inaccuracies, such as missing information and data inserted into the wrong fields. Incorrect mappings ultimately risk organizations’ ability to make decisions, leading to missed opportunities and lost revenue.
By reimagining the ETL approach through self-service, companies can give power to non-technical business users to manage data-driven operations while freeing IT to focus on governance and more high-value tasks. Non-technical users can leverage pre-built connectors, shared templates, AI-data mapping, dashboards and intuitive screens, and more to implement data connections and integrate new customers at the speed of business.
2. Improves Decision-making
Companies can empower their non-technical business users to extract, transform, and load customer data through self-service. In other words, non-techie business users can drive ETL flows without causing delays or risks of inaccuracies. That means users can garner actionable insights sooner, and these insights can be used to make informed decisions in business. While it puts the onus on the business users to get things done quickly, it keeps IT in control of the data governance.
3. Grows Revenue and Increases Upselling
Using self-service-powered solutions business users can accelerate the process by as much as 80 percent, so it only takes users minutes or days to connect with customers.
Customers need not wait for weeks or months to get onboarded and integrated into the business ecosystem. And as a result, business users can delight customers and deliver the value they’ve been promised sooner. On the other hand, customers are inspired to buy more products or services quickly. Because customers are willing to try new products and expand their relationship with companies, revenue increases.
Self-service ETL solutions enable all business users to manage operations to facilitate improved decision-making and grow revenue while freeing IT to drive more strategic tasks.