Expertise analytics software program chief leverages collaboration, information high quality, and information cataloging collectively to speed up Analytics and BI utilizing Information Governance
At a Look
- Contentsquare, a number one digital expertise platform, sought to launch an information governance program after years of serious development
- Selecting Atlan, Contentsquare launched their program with a single supply of context, transparency, and interplay throughout a various vary of customers
- Having efficiently launched information governance, Contentsquare now advantages from a completely mapped information property, helps essential KPIs with single house owners and shared definitions, has streamlined collaboration, and has propagated information and requirements of knowledge high quality throughout its belongings
Contentsquare is an organization that lives and breathes information. With over 1,000 prospects and over 1,600 workers, their digital expertise analytics platform supplies wealthy context and insights into habits, emotions, and intent at every touchpoint in a buyer journey.
With $1.4B in funding, and now in its Collection F spherical, Contentsquare’s meteoric development has been enabled by information. And on the middle of constructing that information accessible, comprehensible, and reliable are their Information Governance group. Composed of Kenza Zanzouri, Information Governance Strategist, and Otavio Leite Bastos, International Information Governance Lead, Contentsquare’s group led an Atlan Masterclass to share how Information Governance is able to accelerating vital enterprise outcomes.
The Significance of Information Governance
Contentsquare’s requirements are excessive. They count on information governance to behave as an accelerator, not a hindrance, to their Analytics and Enterprise Intelligence tasks.
“Information Governance can assist us have a sooner time to worth,” Otavio defined. “From the time you decide to an analytics mission till you ship it, you may make it sooner. If dashboards go reside sooner, and if evaluation could be sooner, then decision-making is quicker. We are able to additionally promote sooner onboarding for brand spanking new information professionals, and velocity up remediations of any information downtime that we’d have.”
With ambitions as excessive as Contentsquare’s, their group is aware of hanging a fragile steadiness between being a enterprise enabler, and constructing a robust analytics basis to keep away from the pitfalls {that a} governance operate is predicted to deal with.
Contentsquare’s group understood the potential penalties if their dedication to information governance was inadequate, or went unsponsored altogether.
“We would have two completely different folks calculating the identical metric utilizing two completely different strategies or formulation, resulting in completely different choices. We are able to even have information flows which are poorly recognized, so we don’t grasp our information pipelines. Being compliant with information safety pointers and laws could be very difficult,” Otavio shared. “And information reliability could be in danger. So you’d have information shoppers calculating and re-calculating metrics to check with dashboards, not trusting the dashboards which are reside.”
Information Governance at Contentsquare
Contentsquare’s information group consists of 10 folks, reporting to the CIO, and segmented into three groups. Information Analytics consists of a Lead and 4 Analysts, Information Engineering consists of a Lead with two Engineers, and Information Governance consists of a Lead and a Strategist.
“We’re the heads of KPI requirements. For any method, for any methodology of calculating metrics, it’s as much as us to orchestrate and lead folks to determine the requirements for a very powerful metrics on the firm. Second is information high quality, testing information to see if it’s behaving accurately, and as anticipated,” Otavio shared. Additionally essential for the Information Governance group is information safety, guaranteeing that greatest practices are completely executed, and laws are adhered to.
Dwelling on the middle of every of the Information Governance group’s tasks is Atlan, advancing their constitution of accessibility, understandability, and trustworthiness. “It’s our house for each KPI and dashboard that we’ve on the firm,” Otavio defined. “Our goal is to make information accessible. Information have to be easy, comprehensible. And information have to be reliable.”
Contentsquare’s Trendy Information Stack
Contentsquare’s information stack consists of supply techniques like Salesforce, Workday, and Hubspot flowing via Matillion, their integration layer. Snowflake serves as their information storage layer, with an information lake containing uncooked information, an information warehouse with reworked information, and information marts immediately related to Tableau and Google Information Studio for visualization and evaluation. Lastly, Monte Carlo serves as Contentsquare’s information high quality software.
Contextualizing and activating this information stack, and serving on the middle of their information governance operate, is Atlan.
“Information area house owners can each learn information from Atlan and write information to Atlan. Similar for KPI house owners, who can learn any info, however may enrich Atlan with documentation,” Otavio defined. “Now we have an information catalog. Now we have a glossary that’s house for our most vital KPIs and metrics. And we are able to catalog each dashboard that we’ve on the firm, and do automated information lineage, which could be very good.”
And to ease collaboration throughout a spectrum of customers, Contentsquare has built-in Atlan with Slack, enabling seamless communication about their information belongings.
Treating Information Output as a Information Product
Contentsquare views information governance as a method to deliver readability to a fancy, difficult-to-understand panorama of belongings, possession, and context. “You may discover in any firm throughout the globe that there are dashboards, KPI house owners, information fields, information well being checks, information shoppers, and never every little thing is related. They’re flowing in an ocean, and nobody understands their that means or how they’re associated,” Otavio defined.
However with a well-defined governance program, these dots are related, expressing significant hyperlinks between Contentsquare’s information belongings, know-how, and other people, avoiding inefficiencies throughout their information operations.
Step one towards launching a governance program was to higher outline possession and duty utilizing a Information Product Tree, and to ruthlessly prioritize by defining a very powerful metrics to their enterprise.
Defining a Information Product Tree
Underpinning the idea of knowledge merchandise was fastidiously outlined area possession, and the popularity that treating dashboards, evaluation, and experiences as merchandise required orchestration throughout technical capabilities. “The idea is sort of easy. You’ve gotten information merchandise linked to make use of circumstances. Use circumstances are linked to some underlying information. And you could carry out some information high quality monitoring on every information discipline,” Otavio defined.
Prioritizing Metrics
With a framework for cross-functional possession of knowledge merchandise outlined, it was essential for the group to concentrate on rolling out merchandise the place they’d have the best influence. For Contentsquare, that meant defining the metrics that their enterprise demanded, defining their precedence, and executing from most-to-least vital.
“Our high precedence was our High KPIs on the firm, which measure the well being of the enterprise across the globe for any division within the firm,” Otavio shared. “That’s the place we targeted 60-80% of our effort, till now. Our second precedence was Strategic KPIs, vital at a division degree. Perhaps these KPIs are solely vital to the Gross sales, Advertising, or Finance departments. And the final precedence was team-level metrics, possibly measuring the efficiency of a mission in a small group within the firm, these are Operational KPIs.”
Executing Information Governance and Information High quality
With know-how and possession outlined, and a prioritization framework recognized, Contentsquare then began a 5-step course of to place their information governance and high quality operate into observe.
Step 1: Information Prioritization
First was formalizing information prioritization, figuring out a very powerful metrics and use circumstances for enrichment. Storing this info in a profile for every vital asset in Atlan, Contentsquare’s group documented descriptions, enterprise guidelines, how metrics had been calculated, formulation, and formal house owners.
Step 2: Information Cataloging and Information Lineage
Subsequent, with information belongings correctly enriched, the group utilized Atlan’s automated lineage to map how every information asset comes into being.
“We all know the place information is coming from, we all know the place information goes to. Is that this information going to new tables, new dashboards, new extractions on Tableau, for instance? That’s what we are able to know utilizing Atlan,” Otavio shared. “And what’s very good is that Atlan will routinely sync to our databases and to our information visualization software. For all of our mapping, we didn’t do something manually.”
Step 3: Information Safety
With information belongings correctly outlined and contextualized, and with their full lineage understood, the group undertook a classification train, defining the sensitivity of knowledge and specifying who would have entry to it.
“What’s very attention-grabbing is that Atlan will routinely propagate these classifications to the underlying information belongings,” Otavio defined. “You probably have a metric, and anybody within the firm can entry that metric, then the information behind that asset may also be accessed by anybody. It simply retains coherence between our metrics and underlying information.”
Step 4: Information High quality
Turning to Monte Carlo, the group constructed out monitoring and information high quality triggers. Within the occasion of an information difficulty, alerts could be despatched on to Slack, the place information house owners might click on into incidents, triage, and proper them, as wanted. Additional, utilizing Atlan’s native integration with Monte Carlo, every alert creates an announcement inside all affected information asset profiles in Atlan.
Step 5: Information Insurance policies and Processes
Lastly, having outlined greatest practices, carried out a glossary and documentations, and constructed a framework for information high quality, the group moved to create information insurance policies in processes, beginning the method of coaching customers, and iterating to make sure their laborious work would lead to a persistent, improved method of working.
Constructing Personas
“Atlan facilitated the centralization of all vital belongings and enterprise definitions, so we might then fulfill the day-to-day challenges of various folks at Contentsquare,” Kenza shared. With a various array of potential customers throughout completely different departments, with completely different operational wants, the group moved their focus to bettering information worth streams. Referencing the Atlan Worth Stream Library, a set of greatest practices obtainable to Atlan prospects, Kenza and her group began the method by defining personas.
First was Sego, a Enterprise Analyst accountable for delivering experiences and dashboards that assist Contentsquare’s enterprise groups perceive their efficiency. “She may say ‘Why is it so laborious to grasp what I can use and who I ought to attain out to?’ She wants a go-to house the place information cataloging, information lineage, and dashboards are only a click on away,” Kenza defined.
Subsequent was Hiroto, a Information Engineer accountable for sustaining enterprise intelligence information pipelines and securing information flows. The group discovered that Contentsquare’s Information Engineers would profit from metadata to assist them prioritize migrations, optimize information processes, and enhance their information warehouse, and automatic lineage to grasp the downstream impacts of their work.
Jill, a enterprise person from Contentsquare’s Buyer Success Operations group, was much less technically savvy, however was data-driven in her enterprise choices. These enterprise customers would profit from extra context to higher conceptualize the information obtainable to them as they deliberate the quarters and years forward for his or her departments. “All of those departments sit up for a transparent method of digesting the information generated by all of our sources,” Kenza shared.
The ultimate persona was Martin, Contentsquare’s CIO, who required full visibility on their information atmosphere, and a view of all of their information, sourced and guarded in a single location.
“As you may see, all of our personas are vital to contemplate. However most share widespread difficulties. It’s why it’s vital to take heed to information specialists and information shoppers, who can construct a robust information governance framework with you,” Kenza defined.
Overcoming Rollout Challenges
Even with a method as well-defined as Contentsquare’s, the group confronted early challenges, and urged taking time to align stakeholders, guarantee sturdy possession, and thoughtfully tackle person wants to extend adoption.
Problem 1: Alignment
The primary problem confronted by the Contentsquare group was one in all alignment, referring to a single, shared sense of reality round every of their KPIs and BI deliverables, obtainable in a single, simple-to-access location. “We went from three definitions and formulation for a similar KPI, which was rather a lot, to a single definition and method. We wished to ensure that everybody was aligned, on the identical web page, on Atlan,” Kenza shared.
Problem 2: Possession
Second was guaranteeing that for every information asset and business-critical KPI, {that a} single proprietor could be recognized. “Figuring out the correct individual diminished stress, in fact, but in addition time. It could ease adoption, and tackle accurately, in a well timed method, all data-related points,” Kenza defined.
The place Contentsquare’s belongings as soon as had a number of house owners, driving confusion from finish customers, and further effort for area specialists, there’s now a single, empowered proprietor for every information asset and KPI.
Problem 3: Person Engagement
Lastly, the group took a considerate method to person engagement, sustaining sturdy particular person relationships and a excessive customary of service, whereas additionally scaling their attain via a neighborhood method.
“It was clear that coaching and constructing a robust neighborhood round information cataloging, helped us go from low adoption to rising adoption,” Kenza defined. To make sure that the customers they wanted to interact understood the significance of collaborating, Kenza and Otavio additionally enlisted the help of Contentsquare’s management group.
Contentsquare’s Governance Technique in Motion
With the correct know-how in place, an information governance and high quality technique efficiently launched, and personas that ensured solutioning was priceless to their finish customers, Otavio shared an instance of what’s potential.
Utilizing the mixing between Atlan and Monte Carlo, Contentsquare’s group efficiently launched a use case to speak information high quality alerts to an array of downstream stakeholders. When an incident is recognized on Monte Carlo, info is pushed into Atlan, the place an alert seems in every affected information asset’s profile.
“This script will routinely detect points, and put an announcement in Atlan telling the person to contact the information proprietor,” Otavio defined. “Anybody navigating to Atlan and looking for the correct dataset will know if they will use a dataset. Right here, we’ve an entire propagation and hyperlink between the enterprise world and the information world. We’re sending alerts to datasets on Atlan, however we’re additionally sending alerts to any metrics which are utilizing a dataset as a reference to be calculated.”
For extra technical customers, like information house owners or engineers, a easy seek for an information asset in Atlan will yield a hyperlink immediately into Monte Carlo, the place additional evaluation could be carried out, like viewing previous incidents, freshness, quantity evolution, lineage, and schema modifications.
When to Begin Information Governance
Essential to Contentsquare’s success was beginning Information Governance and an opportune time. Otavio started by contemplating, then measuring, the scale of his group and the speed of their output, establishing a baseline.
With a small group of 1 to 2 information analysts, Contentsquare discovered that it will take one month to construct a manufacturing dashboard. Over time, their information group grew to help the rising wants of their enterprise. “Extra folks means fewer parallel duties. So you may ship worth sooner. You recruit extra folks, and as an alternative of spending one month constructing a dashboard, possibly you spend two weeks and the dashboard will probably be reside,” Otavio shared.
The plain assumption for information groups is that as headcount and assets develop, time-to-value will proceed to decrease, however Contentsquare discovered that this was not the case. Because the variety of analysts grew, their options elevated in technical depth, and a rising variety of technical belongings like scripts would go with out updates. Their information lake grew, making it extra obscure what information belongings had been obtainable. Processes modified at a excessive tempo, and with new groups throughout the globe, new methods of working, together with how metrics had been calculated or information high quality was measured, grew to become misaligned.
Regardless of a rising headcount, and higher know-how, the tempo of supply slowed.
“So when is the great time to start out information governance? It’s if you begin realizing that you simply’re recruiting extra information analysts and possibly much more information engineers, and it’s not fixing your issues. You’re really spending an increasing number of time to ship an information mission, as a result of you will have so many blocks, so many pitfalls, and so many traps alongside the way in which.”
To determine the proper time to start an information governance program, the Contentsquare group emphasised the significance of measurement. Utilizing a mission administration software like Jira, information groups ought to measure the time it takes for tasks to finish, from defining specs till supply. When time to worth slows, the chance for information governance to speed up outcomes is at its highest.
Key Takeaways
Wanting again on the profitable launch of Information Governance at Contentsquare, Kenza considers 4 key items of recommendation for information leaders contemplating an identical journey.
1: Centralize Much less, Orchestrate Extra
“Suggestions could be very, crucial. It is advisable to make investments effort and time right into a profitable framework with out taking full duty and motion. Take into consideration partaking completely different stakeholders, centralizing much less and orchestrating extra. Outline what beauty like for various personas, folks, information groups, and enterprise shoppers, so we are able to all leverage collaboration and embrace change.”
2: Deal with Deliverables as Information Merchandise
“Attain out to completely different stakeholders, accumulate all of the logical hyperlinks to your information belongings, and also you’ll positively optimize prices and generate worth.”
3: Guarantee Clear Possession
“Establishing key stakeholders within the enterprise is a key takeaway. They can assist you construct a robust, and long-term information high quality and governance operate.”
4: Break Down your Information Governance Program
“Information governance is new for lots of people. It’s essential to take your time. You must break it up into completely different trainings. It is advisable to guarantee what you pot in place is sweet for everybody.”
Photograph by Startaê Staff on Unsplash
