Speaker describes DataSelf’s enterprise-grade BI architecture: a SQL Server data warehouse, a proprietary, largely code-free ETL tool, and Tableau for analytics. Over 12 years serving mid-sized companies they built a library of 5,000+ reports, dashboards and KPIs that customers can use out-of-the-box or quickly adapt (example: changing a 3-month moving-average to 4 months in under a minute). The speaker argues this speeds time-to-value, lets decision-makers start driving validation early, and reduces the need to build reports from scratch.
Questions this video answers
SQL Server
Tableau
12 years
More than 5,000
3, 6 and 12 months
Chapters
So looking from the architecture of an enterprise grade BI solution for data warehousing, we use SQL Server, which is one of the most reliable SQL Server platforms out there. Instead of using SQL programming, we have built our own ETL or extraction, transformation and loading tool. This allows us or whoever is maintaining the data warehouse to do the job in a fairly code free environment. So easier and faster. For the analytics platform we leverage Tableau, which in the last five years has been rewarded as the gold standard for analytics by Gartner. So it's one of the easiest to use and fastest analytics platform out there. And in these 12 years we've been doing analytics for mid sized companies. We have built more than 5,000 reports, dashboards and KPIs. So once people start with data self, they don't have to start from scratch everything. But they have a lot. Now some people tell me, wow, that's a lot. Yes, it's a lot. Nobody needs 5,000 reports that should present from a starting point. Nobody needs 5,000. True, nobody needs 5,000. But let me give you two examples of why we build and continue to expand this library. A few years ago one prospect told me, no Johnny, I don't need 5,000, I need 20 and I'm sure you don't have any of them. I said, you know, throw me one. And one of the reports he needed was a average moving sales by product in a four moving window. Well, we have that kind of report, but not, not for four months, only for three, six and 12 months. So he told me, you know, I told you that you wouldn't have it. And I said, yep, you're right, we don't have it. But in less than a minute I took one of those reports for three months and I changed to four, I saved it and I said, well now we have 5,001 and one of yours is ready. So the point is these 5,000 were inspired by, by clients asking us these questions, these unique questions that everyone has. And over time we built a lot. So many of our clients find what they need right off the bat or with a simple few changes they can adapt to the specific needs so they can focus on analyzing data, not building from scratch everything. So very valuable. The other advantage of this comprehensive out of the box solution is usually when you install a BI solution, it takes some time for people to start thinking about it and getting value out of it. One of my clients, he also told me that he moved to a different business and he asked me, Johnny, just install the out of the box just as is. Because even though probably some of my data is not ready yet for analysis. I'm sure part of it is ready and I cannot wait weeks or maybe even months for it to go through validation. Let me drive the process. Let me decide what's ready and what's not ready so I can tell you the IT and BI team what to focus next. So putting, you know, decision makers in the driver's seats early on is critical. In the 5,000 can help them get in the driver's seat usually in a matter of hours. Once we install the product, it's really valuable.
