Reverse ETL is a process that involves copying data from a data warehouse to operational tools such as SaaS tools used for growth, marketing, sales, and support. Traditional ETL involves replicating data from a data source to a data warehouse. Reverse ETL is a relatively new category in the data space that enables real-time decision-making, increased collaboration between departments, and streamlined workflows. Reverse ETL allows different departments like product, marketing, sales, engineering, and customer support to be more self-sufficient and effective by giving them direct access to the data they need within the tools they use. Here are some key differences between ETL and Reverse ETL:
- ETL is a one-way door, whereas Reverse ETL is a two-way door.
- ETL pipelines are used to read and write data from operational systems to a data warehouse, whereas Reverse ETL is all about syncing the data in your warehouse to your downstream business tools.
- ETL is typically used for batch-oriented data integration, while Reverse ETL is usually used for real-time data activation.
- ETL focuses on integrating data from multiple sources, and Reverse ETL is focused on making data available for consumption.
Reverse ETL requires writing reverse SQL, which can be challenging. Reverse ETL tools provide a visual interface to choose which query output columns are used to populate standard and custom fields in your operational system. Reverse ETL tools are generally more powerful and cost-effective than iPaaS and open-source solutions. Reverse ETL enables any team, from sales to product, to access the data they need within the systems they use. Reverse ETL can help business users get the data they need without relying on engineering resources, making it easier for analysts to focus on high-level tasks. Reverse ETL can also improve the quality of your data by catching errors and inconsistencies in near-real-time and fixing them before they cause problems. Reverse ETL is a compelling process with many benefits, but it does have limitations. It does not provide an interface to activate your data into personalized, cross-channel customer experiences. This gap is where a customer data platform (CDP) comes into play. A CDP unifies all your customer data and consolidates it into a single profile view for each customer. Reverse ETL is a relatively new technology that sets businesses up to do more complex operational analytics than they could with BI tools alone. It has been around since 2018, but it didn’t really start trending until 2021. Reverse ETL is a technology for taking cleaned and processed data from the data warehouse and ingesting it back into business applications such as Salesforce, where it can be used for business operations and forecasting.
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