How Your Team Can Take Advantage Of Your Data Without Hiring A Full-Time Engineer – Data Strategy Consulting
Companies of all sizes are starting to take advantage of all the various data sets flooding in from Salesforce, Google Analytics, Google Search Trends, and every other API, free data set, and internal tool.
But just having the data is not enough.
The sheer complexity and velocity of data can make it difficult to work with.
Many companies are finding they are limited as far as engineering time and resources go.
Meaning that often much of the data companies collect is ignored.
However, there ways you can alleviate many of the problems that arise when it comes to trying to get access to your data quickly.
Whether you are a small or large company. Some solutions range from third-party software
So how can your team take advantage of your data to make better decisions that lead to a better bottom line?
In this article, we will discuss how your team can take advantage of the low-code tools like Tableau and Fivetran, get trained in data science and engineering, or hire a data scientist or engineering consultant.
All of these methods can help lead to increased profits and reduced costs without hiring a full-time engineer.
Adopt The Modern Data Stack
Adopting the modern data stack can help a team of any size improve access to their data. This is because modern data tools like Fivetran, Google Cloud Platform Data Flow, BigQuery, Snowflake, Looker, and a whole host of other great tools allow data teams to optimize their time. These tools often require less code than many of the data solutions that existed 15-20 years ago.
Why Adopt The Modern Data Stack?
What makes many of the modern data stack tools effective as discussed above is that it allows teams to optimize their limited resources. For example, MVF was able to increase their monthly revenue by £400,000 with only two data engineers thanks to Fivetran and Snowflake.
How?
Because the modern data stack reduces the amount of code required to get data out of all the hundreds of possible data sources your team needs to access.
Also, tools like Snowflake and BigQuery provide out-of-the-box near-optimal performance(some fine-tuning is always required).
To top it all off, using data visualization tools like Looker and Tableau remove the need for custom coding for dashboards. Instead, you can quickly design, prototype, and develop dashboards that you can output to your business side. For example, DiscoverOrg increased annual revenue by contract size by 80-90% through a combination of Looker, Snowflake, and Fivetran.
But if you have never heard of these tools. You’re probably wondering. What do they do?
Let’s go over some of the modern data stack tools and what they do.
Fivetran
Fivetran is a highly comprehensive ELT tool that is becoming more popular every day.
You’re probably wondering, what is an ELT?
ELT stands for extract, load, transform.
These are the steps required to take your data from a system like Salesforce or Quickbooks and insert it into your centralized data storage system (often referred to as a data warehouse).
Fivetran allows for the efficient collection of business processes and customer data from related applications, websites, and servers. The data collected is then transferred to other tools for analytics, marketing, and data warehousing purposes.
Snowflake
Snowflake’s Data Cloud is powered by an advanced data platform provided as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Snowflake enables data storage, processing, and analytic solutions that are faster, easier to use, and far more flexible than traditional offerings.
It does this by combing many modern best practices for cloud data warehouses. This includes separating storage and compute which can reduce costs, providing a host of integrations from BI to data science as well as having properties similar to a Data Lake.
Overall, there are many reasons Snowflake has garnered so much financial investment.
BigQuery
BigQuery is a Serverless enterprise-level data warehouse built to help manage a companies data in BigQuery itself as well as in other data sources like BigTable.
This application can execute complex queries in a matter of seconds on what used to be unmanageable amounts of data. You don’t need to provision resources before using BigQuery, unlike many RDBMS systems. BigQuery allocates storage and query resources dynamically based on your usage patterns.
In the end, BigQuery provides a lot of performance tuning upfront. This isn’t to say you can’t benefit from further tuning and having a data engineer improve your structure. But at a base level, it’s a great place to start.
Looker
Looker gives you the tools to power a multitude of data experiences, from modern business intelligence and embedded analytics to workflow integrations and custom data apps. Regardless of where your data resides, Looker offers a unified surface to access the truest, most up-to-date version of your company’s data. And with data integrated into users’ daily workflows, organizations can extract value from their data at web scales.
Get Data Analytics And Dashboard Training
One way to take advantage of your data is to improve the skill set of you and your team.
Perhaps your team only has one engineer who is forced to be the bottleneck for every project.
This is overwhelming.
To help alleviate that stress, your team can look into data science and data engineering training. Training your employees can help give them the tools to remove a lot of the stress on the single engineer you might have.
We already referenced the fact that MVF and DiscoverOrg were able to avoid hiring new engineers and still found lots of data insights.
Our team can help to develop your skill sets from multiple aspects. All in the goal of helping your team find new insights without hiring new full-time engineers.
That being said, sometimes the best option is to hire a data consultant.
Hire A Data Engineer Or Consultant
Last year a client came to us because they had recently purchased a Tableau subscription. However, after they spent a few months with it, they realized that they didn’t have the time nor the expertise to invest in building Tableau dashboards.
So they hired us.
Truth be told, many of the modern data stack tools do make the work easier. But, this doesn’t mean you don’t need a data expert. Hiring a data science and data engineering consultant can ensure that you fully maximize your data.
You can spend time in training, and learning about all the new technology. It’s an opportunity cost.
Business owners and executives should often focus more on the high-level management and not attempting to get into the weeds of every bit of data.
The advantage of the modern data stack is that it allows you the ability to access your data with a much smaller human investment. Hiring a data science consultant becomes much more appealing because you only need them for short term engagements vs. paying $150k a year to keep them on staff.
Similar to the way companies like DiscoverOrg and Square were able to save anywhere from $150k to $500k a year.
Our team takes advantage of the right tools and our deep understanding of data from multiple industries.
Helping you reduce your workload and improve your bottom-line.
Let’s Take Advantage Of Your Data Today
Data provides insights into multiple aspects of your business.
Letting your team be held back due to a lack of the right tools or training would be a misstep.
With so many great tools like Looker, Fivetran, and BigQuery, companies of all sizes can start to develop
Data is proving to be a large competitive advantage that large and small companies are all utilizing.
Your team could be next.
Thanks for reading! If you want to read more about data consulting, big data, and data science, then click below.
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