ETL Consultants - 175+ Firms To Evaluate (2023 Update)

What Is ETL Consulting?

An ETL consultant helps to build pipelines that replicate data into your centralized analytics environment. The two most common scenarios to hire an ETL consultant are 1) custom ETL development and 2) ongoing ETL maintenance.

1. Custom ETL development - ETL consultants are experts at building custom pipelines that extract data from sources, transform the data, and load it into your analytics environment

2. Ongoing ETL maintenance - Once an ETL pipeline is created, there is always maintenance. ETL consultants can handle this maintenance so you don't have to worry about schema changes, API errors, and other common data integration issues

Whether you need custom ETL development or ongoing ETL maintenance, there are three options to accomplish your goal:

1. Build a solution in-house
2. Buy off-the-shelf technology
3. Hire a consultant

Which ETL Consultants Should You Evaluate? (175+ Consultants)

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of data consultancies that can help with ETL projects. At Portable, we have compiled a list of over 175+ data consultants that you can evaluate. Here's the complete list.

The list includes some of the most notable enterprise data consultancies in the world, as well as one-person consulting firms like The Seattle Data Guy.

But, before you start diving into research, setting up introduction calls, and scoping out your specific projects, it's important to understand how ETL consultants create value, what projects an ETL consultant can help with, and what to look for in an ETL consultant.

If you're looking for a consultant that can build and manage custom ETL pipelines that load data into your data warehouse, keep reading. There might be a simpler solution! (Hint: Portable can help. We build custom data pipelines so your business intelligence team can focus on data analysis)

Which Projects Can an ETL Consultant Help With?

ETL consultants can help with:

• Building custom ETL connectors

• Data integration strategy

• Big data processing

• Data migration

• Centralizing siloed data sets

• Real-time data pipelines

• Data transformation

• Modern data stack architecture

How Do You Evaluate ETL Consultants?

To evaluate an ETL consultant you should follow these 5 steps:

1. Outline your ETL goals

2. Write a project description or job description

3. Evaluate your options

4. Narrow down your options and check references

5. Start with a small ETL project

Step 1: Outline Your ETL Goals

Whenever you hire a consultant or an employee, you need to understand two things:

1. The value they will create

2. The cost

Before you get started with technical requirements, writing a job description, evaluating options, or checking references, you need to understand how the consultant will create value for your business.

ETL consultants can create value from either:

1. Data analytics (better decision-making)

2. Process automation (replacing manual business processes with technology)

3. Product development (generating revenue from client adoption)

Outline the specific projects you believe will create the most value and identify any vertical-specific requirements (healthcare, e-commerce, marketing, etc.).

Once you understand how an ETL consultant can create value, you need to understand the cost to make such an investment.

For a full-time employee, the cost is mostly the result of salary range and benefits. When evaluating a consultant, you need to understand the project costs, hourly costs, or retainer pricing model that will be required.

Step 2: Write a Project Description or Job Description

Now that you understand the path to value creation and the necessary investment to make progress against your goals, you need a clear description of the role and responsibilities.

This is where a job description will come in handy.

In the job description, you should outline the job title, pay range, and business requirements. You should also consider including:

• Communication skills

• Years of experience with ETL

• Onsite vs. remote expectations

• Relevant expertise with project management methodologies (agile, waterfall)

• Knowledge of your technology stack and tooling (Salesforce, Zendesk, NetSuite, IBM, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.)

• Technical knowledge (SQL, software development, software engineering, Unix, AWS, GCP, Azure, data engineering, information technology, etc.)

• Education (if applicable - bachelor's degree, computer science, engineering boot camp, etc.)

Don't forget to check local, state, and federal laws to make sure you hire fairly and include the necessary details in your job description.

Step 3: Evaluate Your Options

Once you understand your goals and the type of solution you want to build for internal stakeholders or end users, it's now time to evaluate your options.

Where should you start? Well, here is a list of 175+ data consultants.

Set up introductory meetings with as many companies as you can. Most of these firms have a 'Contact Us' form or a 'Schedule An Introductory Meeting' button where you can get in touch.

Within an hour, you can schedule 20 meetings.

If you're looking for a consultant in a specific geography, or with specific expertise, it's probably a good idea to take a look through the websites and LinkedIn profiles before scheduling time.

Step 4: Narrow Down Your Options and Check References

As you start to identify the ETL consultancies that are the best fit, make sure to get references, evaluate projects, and ask for testimonials and case studies.

External validation, certification, and social proof do not guarantee a great experience, but a lack of external validation likely means you should do some more research before signing up for a big project.

Step 5: Start With a Small ETL Project

Regardless of the consultant you choose, it's always a good idea to start small.

If you can sign a month-to-month agreement, or work on an hourly or project-based model for a few weeks, it allows you to evaluate a few key things:

• Is the consultant responsible?

• Do you have a good working relationship with the consultant?

• Is communication clear and effective?

• Are the deliverables of high quality?

Over time, as you see success, you can always increase the scope of your relationship, or even decide to hire a full-time employee if the scope becomes large enough.

One of the most common ways to get started with an ETL consultant is by building a custom ETL pipeline.

If that's what you need, Portable can help.

How Do You Get Started With a Custom ETL Solution? (In Under 5 Minutes)

Here's how you get started with using Portable for custom ETL.

1. Create your account (no credit card necessary)

2. Connect a data source

3. Authenticate your data source

4. Select a destination and configure your credentials

5. Connect your source to your data warehousing environment

6. Run your flow to start replicating data from your source to your destination

7. Use the dropdown menu to set your data flow to run on a cadence

Does Portable Offer ETL Consulting Services?

Portable is a cloud-hosted ETL tool (a product not a service). While we do not offer ETL consulting services, we do build custom ETL (extract, transform, load) integrations on-demand for clients as part of our product offering, for free.

We have invested years in building a platform on which we can build no-code ETL integrations for clients. As a result, we can build net new custom ETL connectors in hours or days and optimize them to your requirements.

Because we specialize in ETL pipelines, you'll receive out-of-the-box notifications, data quality, and governance that you might not receive from a consultant.

As part of your data management strategy, if you're thinking about hiring a consultant or ETL developer to develop or manage data extraction workloads, let us know - we're happy to provide a second perspective.

With Portable, you'll get the same personalized experience as a consultant without paying the prices that come along with custom services.

Need a Custom ETL Integration? – Sign Up For Free!

At Portable, custom ETL is our specialty.

Portable can offer the personalized experience of a data integration consultant without the prices that come along with custom work. Portable manages the ETL process so your team can focus on insights.

Looking for a custom data integration? Get started with Portable.