What Is ETL? ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load. It refers to a database usage process that pulls data from one or more data sources; transforms the data, or changes it to a format or structure that is accessible for queries and suitable for analysis; and loads it into the final target database, data warehouse or application. Typically, since data extraction can take some time – particularly when it’s consolidating large amounts of information from different sources – the transformation and loading steps may begin before extraction is complete. This means that while data is being pulled, a transformation process can execute, preparing the data for loading; data loading may then begin without waiting for the completion of the other phases.

Using Master Data Management to Close Gaps in Customer Experience Gartner defines master data management (MDM) as “a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies and chart of accounts.” Basically, it means linking all data sources into a single master file that provides a common point of reference.

At Topdown, we don’t make a digital asset management (DAM) solution. But since we do make customer communications management (CCM) solutions, and CCM software needs access to digital assets to function, we spend a lot of time thinking about DAM-related issues. As we develop our next generation of CCM software, we see the need to address DAM in three categories: classic enterprise content management (ECM), traditional DAM, and parts of documents. This article looks at those three categories, and at how to get the most out of them today and in the future.