In terms of data management, what we mean when we say “script” is a piece of custom code that’s written to handle any part of the ETL/ELT process. It could just be something simple, or a complex python script with vast libraries and dependencies.
For businesses, scripts often make up a lot of their critical processes. But, this is inefficient. It’s time to replace those scripts with new modern data integration.
Key Takeaways
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Custom scripts, whether a simple snippet or a complex Python program with dependencies, often end up running critical business processes by accident rather than by design.
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Scripts tied to legacy applications become unmaintainable over time, especially once the person who wrote them leaves and no one else understands how they work.
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Replacing scripts with modern data integration delivers four main benefits: increased efficiency, increased productivity, process improvement, and better availability of data to end users.
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Scripts often handle errors poorly, and fixing issues piles on top of existing issues rather than resolving them cleanly.
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A modern ETL tool can abstract away differences in input data, so varying data types can be inserted into a table and used consistently, something scripts struggle to do.
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Replacing scripts makes critical data more accessible to non-technical end users, including business analysts, marketing teams, and sales teams, without needing developer involvement.
Why replace your scripts?
So, why would you want to replace your scripts if they’re specific to your business and are fulfilling tasks?
Well, just like with data migrations, scripts are often associated with legacy applications that are no longer maintainable. The amount of time and resources required to work with these scripts and fix them when they break slows down your productivity.
Or, an old colleague could have written the scripts and no one knows how to change them. So you end up with a post-it note on the system saying: “Steve wrote this script. Don’t touch this. Ever!”
The result is you end up with something that can’t scale. The larger data volumes will take up valuable development time to keep running. And even if the script is doing its job, it might be preventing you from upgrading other parts of your system. It’s a key reason to replace your scripts - they just can’t keep up and will prevent you from growing.
So, what are the main benefits of replacing these scripts?
1. Increased efficiency
By replacing scripts with modern data integration, you’ll be saving yourself and others a lot of hassle. The capabilities of the scripts might be quite limited and so scaling them up for higher volumes isn’t a viable option. They might also not handle errors very well, leading to issues piling on top of issues.
For the full picture of the challenges data integration teams face, read Data integration 101: types, challenges, and best practices.
Your dev team’s time is valuable. They shouldn’t be wasting time on trivial tasks such as trying to get these legacy scripts to align with your business objectives.
2. Increased productivity
Scripts can hold back your productivity. Modern data integrations will be able to ingest data and then change the input in an agile way, while with scripts this is far more difficult.
A modern ETL tool can increase the productivity of a system by letting you abstract away differences in input data. This essentially means you can insert data of varying types into a table and use it in the same way.
3. Process improvement
It’s not just about the little problems, it’s about the big picture as well. As your business grows, exceptions tend to become more of an issue and so having an agile data integration will help you deal with this more smoothly.
Also, new processes are sure to come along. These could be key to your business intelligence, so sticking with scripts might result in these critical processes being difficult to execute.
4. Availability to end users
Scripts aren’t user-friendly. They’re hard to understand, harder to modify and usually require significant input from a development team. A benefit of sacking off the scripts in favor of modern data integration is that it allows you to make this critical data more easily available to end users. This might be your business analysts, marketing teams or sales teams.
Watch as one of CloverDX's engineer's walks through replacing scripting with modern data integration:
Manage it all with CloverDX
Replacing your scripts with modern data integration opens up new possibilities for scalability and automation. But fundamentally, it makes your day-to-day operations run smoothly and more efficiently.
CloverDX can connect with legacy systems as well as more modern systems, tackling even the most complex of data scenarios. It can be fully automated to make every step of your process easier and more efficient. If you’re looking to clean up and modernize your old data, book a demo today.
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