How Does Fivetran Simplify Data Integration?

One tool with the ability to move all your data with ease

Businesses have an unprecedented amount of data from multiple sources. From customer profiles, transactional data, web analytics, and so much more. Data is often spread across many platforms or applications in the software stack. This makes it difficult for your business to make the right choices with the information at hand. 

Data Engineers / Data Analysts / Data Scientists are often tasked with managing and integrating all the data in one place. Gaining crucial insight into business operations. Yet, this process can be complex and time-consuming. One of the largest challenges in data integration is volume. Your data team needs to have info accessible, stored and integrated at a fast pace to avoid delays and that’s one point where Fivetran can help accelerate the ingestion of the data from any source to any destination.

Other challenges inside data integration come from the data sources, quality, and security.  Each data source has its own unique structure and format to create challenges to build a single unified view. 

As mentioned data quality can also vary depending on the source. It’s important to ensure the data is accurate, complete, and consistent. The last hurdle is data security being a major concern when it comes down to integration. Especially with compliance, regulation, and privacy rights becoming important around the world. This is concerning when data is coming from different sources. Especially when various softwares have different security and compliance requirements.

Introducing Fivetran

Fivetran’s main purpose is to help ease data movement from one place to another. With ELT or Extract, Load, Transform for integrating data, Fivetran is flexible enough to perform the Extract and Load operations. Fivetran can scale to handle any size of a data set. Moving data from across several programs and placing it in the data lake zone or further integrated into the data warehouse. Along with handling all the data quality, sources, security, and compliance. 

Inside the data warehouse, all the transformation, security, and governance occur. This saves time, reduces costs and improves accuracy. 

To get into it, here is how Fivetran can benefit your organization. 

Data tells the story and health of your company. Without that knowledge, you won’t be able to make key decisions to improve practices. Your company needs the information fast. Both to make analytical and operational changes for the sake of your customers.  

Fivetran saves time by moving every piece of data across all channels into a single place before getting transformed for modelling. With data across your marketing, finance and sales or any other departments combined in one place. Your data team can create larger and faster insights into business practices. Allowing decision-makers to know what’s working and what’s not. 

Inside Fivetran, over 300 managed connectors exist for every data source. Everything from Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Google Analytics, Salesforce, SAP, any Database, Shopify, and Instagram Business. If there isn’t a connector available, custom connectors allow you to build using your own API code. Once connectors are set up, your team can manage the data replication with ease.

How Data Moves Through Fivetran

Data moves from your source, and to a centralized data lake or data warehouse or even for a mesh architecture with multiple destinations all within Fivetran, where data can be transformed in any number of ways. For example, Google Analytics has your raw data. Fivetran handles all the scheduling and batching as well as maintaining the compatibility between data. Allowing to create faster and more usable infographics for your marketing team to see ROAS.

Transforming Data

Using pre-built data models saves tons of time. This allows your team to prepare, total and enrich your data on a built-in scheduler. For example, you want data pulled and updated during the slow times in the business day. Sync frequency allows connectors to schedule tasks and sync with your data warehouse. As well as sending you notifications when system outages occur, new users are added and much more. Notifications help in troubleshooting any problems right away, another time-saving benefit.

Flexible Pricing Structure

Cost is always a problem when looking at different platforms. Fivetran is different. By basing the price on usage and the number of connectors, rather than the subscription model. 

Let’s say you are a small business with low data volumes and a limited budget. One data engineer can use two connectors – Shopify and PostgreSQL. By transferring your company’s data to either a data lake or a cloud warehouse, with possible transformations, you can make all your data readily available for use and sharing with stakeholders. With a monthly capacity of 12.5 million rows and 400,000 active rows, this can be achieved quickly and at no cost.

On the flip side, a larger company warehousing 55 million rows of data, and 7.5 million active rows using eight connectors will spend closer to $30,0000 a year. This also moves the other way, when you decide to scale down, the annual cost of Fivetran reduces as well.

Heighten Data Security

As with any data, security and compliance is crucial. Fivetran uses the most comprehensive privacy and security policies of any ELT platform. With compliance under GDPR and CCPA for regional digital privacy acts, Fivetran meets or exceeds data privacy standards. Even sensitive information is secure like health records under HIPAA. 

For enhanced security, the data Fivetran stores are transient and temporary and are only stored for the duration of the data syncing process. Encryption is used at all levels, so the most sensitive data is secure in transit and at rest. 

Using any type of security option can increase costs. Fivetran allows you to choose the right level of protection for your data based on the situation. If enhanced security is needed for HIPAA, it can be scaled up to meet the standards. For added security, Fivetran’s in-house security experts manage audits, system resilience and 3rd-party tools.

Improving Customer Experience

Two cases stand out when it comes to the application of Fivetran. 

The first is how the Denver Broncos use insights to develop a winning fan experience from data. With a 4 person team, the Broncos saved 20-plus hours per week on pipeline maintenance. 

“We’re able to get to know our fans a lot better than we’ve ever been able to before, which coincides with the fact that people want a more personalized experience,” says Wray. “Fans want shorter lines and colder drinks. To make that happen, we needed a comprehensive data strategy. We needed a modern data stack.” Clark Wray, Senior Director of Ticket Strategy and Analytics.

Warehousing the data into Snowflake became seamless. Real-time data created a more personalized fan experience. All the information fueled the Broncos’ ticket sellout streak for 52 continuous years.

More info, Less Cost

In the second case. Canva, the online design and publishing tool empowers employees with the right data. Allowing everyone to optimize marketing budgets and grow their business. The key issues Greg Roodt, Head of Data Platforms, found was the lack of comparison insight for all their data. Access wasn’t the issue. 

While searching for a solution, Greg pulled 3 engineers from another team to create connectors in AWS. It took 3 months to create the custom integrations between 3 different apps. Yet, there were still more apps to connect. In the end, the solution turned out to be Fivetran. Allowing for marketing and sales analytics from dozens of platforms. The outcome was creating a 360-degree view of the customer and business. This saved over $200,000 per year in engineering costs.

Partner Technologies

As with anything data integration, there are multiple sources that can exist in your software stack. This is why Fivetran has five different partner technologies. They work with Amazon Web Services, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure and Snowflake.

Conclusion

Fivetran, featured on TechRadar by Devoteam, is an excellent addition to any modern software stack. Giving your data engineers and analysts tools to integrate data from 300+ sources. Not to mention the data transformation to have your data modelled any way you need it. 

As for the teams from the Denver Broncos and Canva. Time and money can be saved with automated data integration. Fivetran continues to play an important role. From marketing, finance, analytics, and operations. Fivetran helps you automate data movement. 

How can I learn more?

This article is part of a greater series centred around the technologies and themes found in the first edition of the TechRadar by Devoteam . To read further into these topics, please explore the TechRadar by Devoteam .

Data