Michigan Education Association Reduces Data Extraction and Loading
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Centerprise
- DW Builder
Tech Stack
- MS SQL
- MySQL
- Salesforce CRM
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The Michigan Education Association (MEA) is a self-governing education association that represents about 120,000 educators working throughout the state. The association utilizes data to organize bargaining units and continuing education, prepare invoicing, and for resolving member issues. MEA leverages data from several sources, including flat files and CSV files with over 8 million rows. To make integration easier, MEA uses Astera's Centerprise platform to extract data from these files and load it to an MS SQL-based transactional system. With Centerprise, the association is also able to minimize the manual effort involved in downloading and processing data, building a MySQL data warehouse, and populating it with data from its MS SQL transactional system. This data warehouse has enabled the organization to build an online membership application, allowing MEA to assist members more efficiently.
The Challenge
The Michigan Education Association (MEA) was facing a major challenge with its manual data extraction and integration process. The association received invoice data from a third-party vendor via an SFTP server. This data, contained in a zip folder, had to be downloaded, unzipped, and loaded into an MS SQL transactional system. The zip folder contained different types of files, including CSV and flat files, often with thousands or millions of records. Without an automation tool, the team at MEA had to download the individual files, set up flows, and execute the integration process manually. This was a time-consuming process. Additionally, MEA only wanted to insert records that had been changed or updated into the MS SQL transactional system, which was a challenge without a tool to facilitate the process.
The Solution
MEA opted for Astera's Centerprise platform due to its ease of use and robust automation capabilities. Centerprise allowed MEA to eliminate manual work and dramatically speed up its data integrations. Using the Centerprise platform, MEA scheduled the process of downloading folders containing invoicing data from the SFTP server overnight. This allowed the team to save on crucial productive time in the workday and spend it on reporting and analyses. Instead of waiting for an employee to manually execute the process as they arrive at work in the morning, MEA used Centerprise to complete the integration process overnight and have data available in a report-ready format before the start of the workday. With Centerprise, MEA was able to build a fully functional data warehouse to consolidate data and get a holistic view of its invoicing process. The team loaded data from the MS SQL transactional system to the MySQL data warehouse. From there, it was integrated with Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud to turbocharge MEA's marketing efforts.
Operational Impact
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