16 Best ETL Tools for Your Business

In today’s world, data is the lifeblood of the business landscape. Data contains all of a corporation’s important information. Without this data, companies couldn’t grow and thrive to become what they are today. An analytics report by Deloitte contains a survey asking companies how data analytics has helped them. 55% of respondents stated that data analytics fairly or significantly improved their competitive positioning. Beating the competition is only one of many benefits that comes from using data to your advantage. Data also helps improve logistics, drive sales, budget more efficiently, and a score of other positive effects. It all depends on how you use your company’s data.

It’s next to impossible for anyone to navigate through all of their business data on their own. Data is being added and altered every single day. Business owners should look to ETL tools to help them manage and utilize their important data.

ETL stands for Extract, Transform, and Load. These tools extract data from a source, transform it to the correct format, and then load it into your choice of data storage–a data warehouse. You can set ETL tools to process data in this matter on a scheduled timeframe, or set up a trigger that initiates the cycle. Centralizing the data into a data warehouse is the difficult part and sets the stage for analysis into the inner workings of your organization.

Once you have all the data in your data warehouse, you can use your favorite  reporting/BI tool (Tableau, Looker, etc.) to correlate and analyze all that valuable data to make smart data-driven decisions.

Here are the Top ETL Tools in 2020:

• ETLrobot for consistent and understandable data extraction
    – Best overall ETL tool for businesses
  
• Blendo for data flow management and efficiency
    – Best ETL tool for real-time data analysis
  
• Stitch for data pattern identification
    – Best ETL tool for data processing consolidation
  
• Xplenty for data pipeline construction
    – Best ETL tool for all levels of tech experience
  
• Informatica for powerful data performance
    – Best ETL tool for AI use
  
• Alooma for all types of business data
    – Best ETL tool for scalable data processing
  
• Talend for its capability to improve data-driven decisions
    – Best ETL tool for uncovering how to increase revenue and save money
  
• IRI Voracity for its ability to help businesses better control their data
    – Best ETL tool for fast data processing
  
• Etleap for Virtual Private Cloud capability
    – Best ETL tool for Amazon Web Services
  
• Pentaho Platform for improving communications between data managers and consumers
    – Best ETL tool for increasing data transparency
  
• CloverDX for customized data processing
    – Best ETL tool for financial services and fintech organizations
  
• Fivetran for data management and revisions
    – Best ETL tool for pre-built data pipelines
  
• Segment for its ability to separate operations and customer data
    – Best ETL too for customer data
  
• Elastic for its cost-effective data solutions
    – Best ETL tool for app data
  
• Apache Nifi for hands-on functionality and data visualization capabilities
    – Best ETL tool for graphs
  
• Azure for reducing overhead business costs
    – Best ETL tool for Microsoft-based platforms

Selecting the Right ETL Tool

When looking at ETL tool options, you first want to determine what you will use it for. Your data is a means to an end, so set a goal you hope your choice of ETL tool will help accomplish. As you go through the list of tools below, ask these questions:

• What role will the ETL tool play? Do you want it to compile transaction data, migrate application data, or integrate new data from a merger or acquisition?
• How much data do you need to be processed? Larger amounts of data require a stronger or larger ETL tool.
• Is there a niche feature that benefits your organization? Only select ETL tools might provide exactly what you’re looking for in terms of sources and target databases.
• Price is always a consideration.  Find the tool that meets your budget.  Note, many ETL tools require programmers to configure or program which substantially drives up the cost.

ETL tools are versatile and can accomplish these plus many other goals your business has. Once you’ve decided on what you want it to do, you can narrow down your options.

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