Data Delivery
What is it?
Data Delivery (sometimes called “Data Activation” or “Reverse ETL”) is the “last mile” process of moving refined, trusted insights from the Data Warehouse back into the operational systems where business users work every day.
While traditional BI delivers data to dashboards (passive), Data Delivery pushes attributes (e.g., “Customer Churn Risk Score”) directly into tools like CRMs, Email Marketing platforms, or production APIs. It also encompasses exposing data via standardized APIs (REST/GraphQL) for applications to consume.
Why is it Important?
- Actionability: It turns passive reports into active operations. Sales reps see “High Value Customer” tags directly in Salesforce without switching tabs.
- Consistency: It ensures that the definition of metrics (e.g., “Gross Margin”) is calculated once in the warehouse and pushed everywhere, rather than recalculated differently in every tool.
- Personalization: Enables hyper-personalized customer experiences by feeding enriched behavioral data into marketing automation tools.
Well-known Solutions
- Reverse ETL: HighTouch, Census, RudderStack.
- Data APIs: Hasura (GraphQL over DB), Cube (Semantic Layer API).
- Data Sharing: Snowflake Secure Data Sharing, Delta Sharing.