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6 Best Data Orchestration Tools to Transform Your Business

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6 Best Data Orchestration Tools to Transform Your Business

Data exists everywhere!

We use data every day — in different forms — to make informed decisions. It could be through counting your steps on a fitness app or tracking the estimated delivery date of your package. In fact, the data volume from internet activity alone is expected to reach an estimated 180 zettabytes by 2025.

Companies use data the same way but on a larger scale. They collect information about their targeted audiences through different sources, such as websites, CRM, and social media. This data is then analyzed and shared across various teams, systems, external partners, and vendors.

With the large volumes of data they handle, organizations need a reliable automation tool to process and analyze the data before use. Data orchestration tools are one of the most important in this process of software procurement.

What is Data Orchestration and Data Pipelines

Data orchestration is an automated process of data pipeline workflow. To break it down, let’s understand what goes on in a data pipeline.

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Data moves from its raw state to a final form within the pipeline through a series of ETL workflows. ETL stands for Extract-Transform-Load. The ETL process collects data from multiple sources (extracts), cleans and packages the data (transforms), and saves the data to a database or warehouse (loads) where it is ready to be analyzed. Before this, data engineers had to create, schedule, and manually monitor the progress of data pipelines. But with data orchestration, each step in the workflow is automated.

Data orchestration is collecting and organizing siloed data from multiple data storage points and making it accessible and prepared for data analysis tools. With this automation act, businesses can streamline data from numerous sources to make calculated decisions.

The data orchestration pipeline is a game-changer in the data technology environment. The increase in cloud adoption from today’s data-driven company culturehas pushed the need for companies to embrace data orchestration globally.

Why is Data Orchestration Important

Data orchestration is the solution to the time-consuming management of data, giving organizations a way to keep their stacks connected while data flows smoothly.

“Data orchestration provides the answer to making your data more useful and available. But ultimately, it goes beyond simple data management. In the end, orchestration is about using data to drive actions, to create real business value.”

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— Steven Hillion, Head of Data at Astronomer

As activities in an organization increase with the expansion of the customer base, it becomes challenging to cope with the high volume of data coming in. One example can be found in marketing. With the increased reliance on customer segmentation for successful campaigns, multiple sources of data can make it difficult to separate your prospects with speed and finesse.

Here’s how data orchestration can help:

  • Disparate data sources. Data orchestration automates the process of gathering and preparing data coming from multiple sources without introducing human error.
  • Breaks down silos. Many businesses have their data siloed, which can be a location, region, an organization, or a cloud application. Data orchestration breaks down these silos and makes the data accessible to the organization.
  • Removes data bottlenecks. Data orchestration eliminates the bottlenecks arising from the downtime of analyzing and preparing data due to the automation of this process.
  • Enforces data governance. The data orchestration tool connects all your data systems across geographical regions with different rules and regulations regarding data privacy. It ensures that the data collected complies with GDPR, CCPA, etc., laws on ethical data gathering.
  • Gives faster insights. Automating each workflow stage in the data pipeline using data orchestration gives data engineers and analysts more time to draw and perform actionable insights, to enable data-based decision-making.
  • Provides real-time information. Data can be extracted and processed the moment it is created, giving room for real-time data analysis or data storage.
  • Scalability. Automation of the workflow helps organizations scale data use through synchronization across data silos.
  • Monitoring the workflow progress. With data orchestration, the data pipeline is equipped with alerts to identify and amend issues as quickly as they occur.

Best Tools Data Orchestration Tools

Data orchestration tools clean, sort, arrange and publish your data into a data store. When choosing marketing automation tools for your business, two main things come to mind: what they can do and how much they cost.

Let’s look at some of the best ETL tools for your business.

1. Shipyard

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Shipyard is a modern data orchestration platform that helps data engineers connect and automate tools and build reliable data operations. It creates powerful data workflows that extract, transform, and load data from a data warehouse to other tools to automate business processes.

The tool connects data stacks with up to 50+ low-code integrations. It orchestrates work between multiple external systems like Lambda, Cloud Functions, DBT Cloud, and Zapier. With a few simple inputs from these integrations, you can build data pipelines that connect to your data stack in minutes.

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Some of Shipyard’s key features are:

  • Built-in notifications and error-handling
  • Automatic scheduling and on-demand triggers
  • Share-able, reusable blueprints
  • Isolated, scaling resources for each solution
  • Detailed historical logging
  • Streamlined UI for management
  • In-depth admin controls and permissions

Pricing:

Shipyard currently offers two plans:

  • Developer — Free
  • Team — Starting from $50 per month

2. Luigi

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Developed by Spotify, Luigi builds data pipelines in Python and handles dependency resolution, visualization, workflow management, failures, and command line integration. If you need an all-python tool that takes care of workflow management in batch processing, then Luigi is perfect for you.

It’s open source and used by famous companies like Stripe, Giphy, and Foursquare. Giphy says they love Luigi for “being a powerful, simple-to-use Python-based task orchestration framework”.

Some of its key features are:

  • Python-based
  • Task-and-target semantics to define dependencies
  • Uses a single node for a directed graph and data-structure standard
  • Light-weight, therefore, requires less time for management
  • Allows users to define tasks, commands, and conditional paths
  • Data pipeline visualization

Pricing:

Luigi is an open-source tool, so it’s free.

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3. Apache Airflow

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If you’re looking to schedule automated workflows through the command line, look no further than Apache Airflow. It’s a free and open-source software tool that facilitates workflow development, scheduling, and monitoring.

Most users prefer Apache Airflow because of its open-source community and a large library of pre-built integrations to third-party data processing tools (Example: Apache Spark, Hadoop). The greater flexibility when building workflows is another reason why this is a customer favorite.

Some of its key features are:

  • Easy to use
  • Robust integrations with data cloud stacks like AWS, Microsoft Azure
  • Streamlines UI that monitors, schedules, and manages your workflows
  • Standard python features allow you to maintain total flexibility when building your workflows
  • Its latest version, Apache Airflow 2.0, has unique features like smart sensors, Full Rest API, Task Flow API, and some UI/UX improvements.

Pricing:

Free

4. Keboola

1656056453 24 6 Best Data Orchestration Tools to Transform Your Business

Keboola is a data orchestration tool built for enterprises and managed by a team of highly specialized engineers. It enables teams to focus on collaboration and get insights through automated workflows, collaborative workspaces, and secure experimentation.

The platform is user-friendly, so non-technical people can also easily build their data orchestration pipelines without the need for cloud engineering skills. It has a pay-as-you-go plan that scales with your needs and is integrated with the most commonly used tools.

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Some of its key features are:

  • Runs transformations in Python, SQL, and R
  • No-code data pipeline automation
  • Offers various pre-built integrations
  • Data lineage and version control, so you don’t need to switch platforms as your data grows

Pricing:

Keboola currently has two plans:

5. Fivetran

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Fivetran has an in-house orchestration system that powers the workflows required to extract and load data safely and efficiently. It enables data orchestration from a single platform with minimal configuration and code. Their easy-to-use platform keeps up with API changes and pulls fresh, rich data in minutes.

The tool is integrated with some of the best data source connectors, which analyze data immediately. Their pipelines automatically and continuously update, freeing you to focus on business insights instead of ETL.

Some of its key features are:

  • Integrated with DBT scheduling
  • Includes data lineage graphs to track how data moves and changes from connector to warehouse to BI tool
  • Supports event data flow data
  • Alerts and notifications for simplified troubleshooting

Pricing:

Fivetran has flexible price plans where you only pay for what you use:

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  • Starter — $120 per month
  • Standard Select — $60 per month
  • Standard — $180 per month
  • Enterprise — $240 per month
  • Business Critical — Request a demo

6. Dagster

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A second-generation data orchestration tool, Dagster can detect and improve data awareness by anticipating the actions triggered by each data type. It aims to enhance data engineers’ and analysts’ development, testing, and overall collaboration experience. It can also accelerate development, scale your workload with flexible infrastructure, and understand the state of jobs and data with integrated observability.

Despite being a new addition to the market, many companies like VMware, Mapbox, and Doordash trust Dagster for their business’s productivity. Mapbox’s data software engineer, Ben Pleasonton says, “With Dagster, we’ve brought a core process that used to take days or weeks of developer time down to 1-2 hours.”

Some of its key features are:

  • Greater fluidity and easy to integrate
  • Run monitoring
  • Easy-to-use APIs
  • DAG-based workflow
  • Various integration options with popular tools like DBT, Spark, Airflow, and Panda

Pricing:

Dagster is an open-source platform, so it’s free.

In conclusion…

Companies are increasingly relying on the best AI marketing tools for a sustainable, forward-thinking business. Leveraging automation has helped them accelerate their business operations, and data orchestration tools specifically have provided them with greater insights to run their business better.

Choosing the right ETL tools for your business largely depends on your existing data infrastructure. While our top picks are some of the best in the world, ensure you research well and select the best one to help your business get the most out of its data.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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