As we have often talked about on this blog, ETL functions are crucial whenever two or more information systems need to exchange data. This can involve the need for a CRM to integrate with a transaction system, the financial system, the scheduling system, etc. ETL functions are also needed for analytical purposes when the data to be examined lives in different, unfriendly, if not warring, information systems

Data enrichment improves raw data. Original data sources can be messy, in different formats, from multiple applications (and so on), which makes running predictive analysis on it difficult, if not impossible. Enrichment cleans that data so your data analysts don’t have to.

To help get us even clearer about the value of core data, I’ve broken this category into “human” and “automated,” but both approaches involve both people and machines. Human data enrichment means having a human being transform every row of your data set, but this requires a lot of computer automation to keep it reliable. Likewise, automated data enrichment involves setting up rules and scripts to transform data but requires a human to set up and check those rules.

Human enrichment relies on the fact that there are tasks people are simply better at than machines. Take image classification, for example. Humans can easily tell if a satellite photo contains clouds. Machines still struggle to consistently do that. Yes, that’s extreme.

Now comes ETL/blending of your data to make it a really powerful asset.

Essentially, what ETL/blending solutions do for data analysts is take dissimilar data sources and marry them so analysis can be done.

Here’s an example. Say you have a financial database that contains a list of your customers, how much they pay, and what they buy. That lives in one place. Now say you have a different database containing each customer’s geographical business address. There are companies in this space that help combine that data into a single, usable database, so a data scientist can look into questions like which regions buy the most of a certain product, which parts of the country are your target market, etc.

Much like the ETL/blending tools, data integration programs are mainly focused on combining data from the left side of our ecosystem so it can be modeled by software on the right. In other words, integration tools allow you to marry data from cloud applications so you can get the business intelligence (BI) you must have to compete in your business ecosystem.

Yes, we do that. And more when you must have the benefits of custom applications too.

We can help you monitor your predictive buyer tendency trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals or flag evolving shifts in your markets or financial operations. Call us to start a conversation that can enhance your ETL process and data management investment while you make savvy asset management decisions. 512 478 3848.