A Single Source of Truth for a Technology Innovator
More than three in 10 new apartments in the US are being built using an innovative company’s full-building operating system. But as the company experienced rapid growth, their legacy data platforms were having difficulty keeping up. They asked DAS42 to help build a modern data platform that would provide a consistent and holistic set of data across the business.
The Challenge
Apartment buildings are increasingly incorporating operating systems of software, products, and services that allow them to evolve to meet the demands of residents, tenants, staff, and visitors. Today, more than three in 10 new apartments in the US are being built using an innovative company’s full-building operating system.
As the company experienced rapid growth, their legacy data platforms were having difficulty keeping up. Their existing systems had been designed with specific users and use cases in mind, so applying them universally across the organization was difficult. The customizations created too much complexity, slowed query times, and added to costs.
They were also grappling with siloed data from multiple sources that was also often inaccessible to the people who needed it. As a result, they lacked a holistic view of its data and a single source of truth across the organization.
The Solution
The company asked DAS42 to help build a modern data platform that would provide a consistent and holistic set of data across the business in a centralized, company-owned and controlled environment. We met with key stakeholders and conducted an audit of their existing systems to identify their data needs and the best approach for meeting them.
We focused on creating a new platform that consolidated data tools and technologies on a core set of best-of-breed technologies that is robust and easy to manage, and would align the company with data best practices and to ensure a unified, consistent flow of data. They started by consolidating their data warehousing, migrating their disparate data into a single cloud-based warehouse. To standardize and automate ingestion of data from various spreadsheet programs, we implemented an extract, load, transform (ELT) approach to optimize performance. For building data pipelines and workflows, we selected open-source Apache Airflow technology.
The company was already using Looker as a business intelligence tool, so we centralized and optimized it to align with best practices. We integrated Looker with their CRM systems and ensured that data is consistently defined by making Looker the source of all customer and account attributes.
Finally, we worked with them to align their data processes with best practices and their new technology, helping them identify resource needs and establish clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and ownership.
How Did It Turn Out?
They now have a single source of truth for key business metrics and dimensions across the company. With a platform that builds trust through transparency, data quality, and data governance best practices, including standardization around definitions, naming conventions, and nomenclature, they can focus on applying data to help drive business decisions rather than trying to understand whether their data is accurate or not. Furthermore, everyone in the business, even those without technical skill, can access, understand, analyze, and share data in a secure and governed environment
The platform gives the company the flexibility to accommodate rapidly changing business dynamics, reduces time to insight for new analytics questions, enables new analytics use-cases, allows for faster fixes and enhancements, and reduces resource demands on the data team.
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