Table of Contents
  1. Select Your Data
  2. Select Your NetSuite Reverse ETL Target
  3. Select Your Reverse ETL Transformations
  4. Select Your Queries
  5. Select Your NetSuite Reverse ETL Tool
  6. How Integrate.io Can Help with NetSuite Reverse ETL

Introduction

NetSuite is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) business management platform part of the Oracle enterprise software ecosystem. Although it's primarily intended for small and medium-sized businesses, organizations of all sizes and industries have successfully used NetSuite to balance their checkbooks, manage inventory, bill and invoice customers, and more.

You may already be familiar with ETL (extract, transform, load), a data integration workflow that captures information from sources such as NetSuite and assembles them in a centralized data warehouse. But what about reverse ETL, in which you move this data out of the warehouse and into third-party systems like NetSuite for easier access?

If you're looking to perform reverse ETL with NetSuite, we're here to help. Below, we'll offer 5 tips for pushing data from your warehouse to NetSuite.

1. Select Your Data

When constructing a reverse ETL workflow, the first step is to decide which data you want to send to NetSuite, and which repository you'll be sending it from. Whether you use an Oracle data warehouse or a third-party solution like Amazon Redshift or Snowflake, your choice of the data warehouse should make it easy to send information both in and out.

One reverse ETL best practice is to select your data carefully and judiciously. Just like in regular ETL, if you consume too much data, your pipeline will slow down and suffer from performance issues over time.

2. Select Your NetSuite Reverse ETL Target

The good news is that with NetSuite, you're spoiled for choice when it comes to the data you can send and the analyses you can perform. The features and functionality of NetSuite include accounting and financial management, financial planning, supply chain management, inventory management, billing and invoicing, CRM (customer relationship management), and more.

NetSuite includes a dedicated business intelligence tool, SuiteAnalytics, for real-time embedded analytics. With SuiteAnalytics, you can uncover hidden insights and make better data-driven decisions, steering your organization in the right direction over time.

3. Select Your Reverse ETL Transformations

Between your source data warehouse and your target NetSuite system, your data may have to pass through one or more transformations to make it suitable for storage and analytics. Consider how and why this information may change throughout the reverse ETL process: e.g., to fit the target NetSuite schema, improve performance, etc.

Unlike standard ETL, reverse ETL typically doesn't require in-depth data cleansing since the data has already been "pre-treated" before being loaded into the warehouse. Instead, reverse ETL transformations may involve actions such as joining (uniting two or more database tables based on a shared column between them) or summarization (creating new data by performing calculations on existing data).

Related Reading: Data Transformation: Explained

4. Select Your Queries

Getting your data out of the warehouse and into NetSuite is just the first step (well, the first three steps). Next, you'll need to figure out who will be running queries on this NetSuite data, what kind of queries and analyses they will be, how often they will be run, and a dozen other crucial questions.

Think back to your primary objective for NetSuite reverse ETL: operationalizing your data and getting it to the people who need it. Concretely, what does this mean for your organization? In other words, how will NetSuite users use this data to better inform their daily business activities?

5. Select Your NetSuite Reverse ETL Tool

If you're looking for NetSuite reverse ETL tips and tricks, that's likely a sign that you need a little help in the form of an ETL tool. But not all reverse ETL tools are created equal—so which one should you choose?

It's essential, of course, that you select a reverse ETL tool that's compatible with NetSuite. In other words, your choice of ETL tool should already offer a pre-built NetSuite integration so that you spend less time connecting your systems and more time on valuable analytics activities. Beyond this essential concern, you should also look for an ETL tool with a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that's accessible even to non-technical users, making it easy to operationalize your data.

How Integrate.io Can Help with NetSuite Reverse ETL

Whether you're performing ETL or reverse ETL with NetSuite, you need a good ETL tool. For reverse ETL in particular, look for an ETL tool with integrations that mesh well with your existing technology stack, as well as a user-friendly interface (since many reverse ETL users are on the less technical end of the spectrum).

Integrate.io is a powerful, feature-rich data integration platform that makes it easy for anyone to perform ETL and reverse ETL. Integrate.io offers a simple no-code visual interface and more than 100 pre-built connectors and integrations—including NetSuite. With Integrate.io, you'll spend less time worrying about the technical details and more time enjoying the benefits of a robust NetSuite reverse ETL pipeline.

Want to learn more about how Integrate.io can help with reverse ETL? Get in touch with our team of data experts today to chat about your business needs and objectives, or for a 14-day pilot of the Integrate.io platform.