From Insight to Intelligence: The Transformative Power of ETL Tools for Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the FinTech Industry in West Africa

This study investigates the innovative role of ETL technologies, Extract, Transform, Load, in establishing sustainable competitive advantage within the West African fintech sector, utilising the Resource-Based View and Porter's Theory of Competitive Advantage. It conceptually delineates ETL into three components: data extraction, data transformation, and data loading, and analyses their respective contributions to sustained competitive advantage. Quantitative survey technique was employed to assess the opinions of 450 fintech specialists using Structural Equation Modelling. Results demonstrate that Data Transformation significantly impacts sustainable competitive advantage (β = 0.650, p < 0.001), highlighting its critical function in converting raw data into strategic assets that promote differentiation and innovation. Data Extraction has a positive, albeit marginally significant effect (β = 0.146, p = 0.051), indicating that acquisition alone does not inherently confer a competitive advantage. Data Loading exhibits a minor negative correlation (β = -0.117, p = 0.121), maybe indicative of automation efficiencies. Despite model fit indices revealing room for enhancement (chi-square/df = 7.30, RMSEA = 0.118), reinforces theory by highlighting transformation capacities as crucial determinants of sustainable competitive advantage in emerging countries. It urges fintech firms to allocate greater financial resources towards data transformation technologies and necessitates supportive regulations to enhance digital infrastructure. This study presents significant findings about the enhancement of context-dependent abilities in data, which foster sustainable competitive advantage in resource-scarce environments.