Unifying a Knowledge Stack and Leveraging Self-Serve Analytics with Atlan
The Lively Metadata Pioneers collection options Atlan prospects who’ve accomplished an intensive analysis of the Lively Metadata Administration market. Paying ahead what you’ve discovered to the subsequent knowledge chief is the true spirit of the Atlan group! In order that they’re right here to share their hard-earned perspective on an evolving market, what makes up their fashionable knowledge stack, revolutionary use circumstances for metadata, and extra.
On this installment of the collection, we meet Daniel Ferguson, Knowledge and Analytics Director at PHMG, an audio branding firm that helps over 36,000 shoppers throughout 56 nations sound their finest. Daniel shares how PHMG reworked their knowledge stack from fragmented to unified, and the way Atlan has been a vital piece in by monitoring lineage, managing stories, and easing workforce onboarding.
This interview has been edited for brevity and readability.
Might you inform us a bit about your self, your background, and what drew you to Knowledge & Analytics?
I was a DJ after which labored as a sound engineer constructing recording studios. Throughout my time as a sound engineer, I discovered myself within the technical and analytical aspect of issues. After beginning a household, I wished a change. After promoting my recording studio, my mom, who managed a council workplace, supplied me a job and I began out within the name heart unit, dealing with calls. It rapidly grew to become obvious that I might do extra than simply calls, so I moved to the database workforce.
I began learning for a level in Economics and Mathematical Science at The Open College whereas working on the council. Utilizing the abilities learnt on my diploma I began to construct logistic regression fashions to focus on contacts within the name heart I had beforehand labored in. I proposed that, with only one particular person, I might obtain the identical outcomes as all the workforce. My work generated 300% extra outcomes than the workforce’s mixed efforts by optimizing knowledge assortment, addressing lacking info, and cherry choosing the very best contacts. After that I used to be hooked on the ability of information & analytics.
I then constructed an organization offering knowledge providers to different Native Authorities. Close to the tip of my diploma, a consultancy in Scotland, Aquila Insights, supplied me a place. They labored with shoppers like Sony, Workplace Depot, and RBS, which gave me early publicity to the information career. From there, I superior within the subject and finally joined PHMG. My journey into knowledge was considerably unintended, however it introduced me to the place I’m in the present day.
Would you thoughts describing PHMG?
We focus on audio branding. Consider logos like Netflix or Disney Plus, by sound alone, these manufacturers are immediately recognizable as business leaders in leisure and streaming even when their visible logos aren’t in sight.
We additionally transcend conventional audio branding by growing customized music tailor-made to every group. We’ll take Atlan for example: What’s Atlan about? What do you signify? What’s the kind of rhythm that it needs to convey?
This connection between music and id is what attracted me to the corporate. Now we have been extremely profitable, working in 56 nations with 36,000 shoppers.
Might you describe your knowledge stack, and the way it got here collectively?
After I obtained right here, we have been utilizing SQL servers with Excel spreadsheets. There have been restricted to no interactive stories, and each knowledge request needed to be raised to the information workforce.
There was a have to modernize the knowledge flowing into the corporate and implement the precise know-how to realize this effectively and reliably. I targeted on discovering know-how options that will streamline operations and cut back the necessity for extra engineers.
I used to be actually cautious with know-how choice, avoiding options for the sake of it, and never constructing from scratch. Whereas Azure Cloth affords a complete answer, for instance, it’s nonetheless new and that comes with further dangers, however is one thing I’m retaining my eye on. It’s essential to decide on the very best instruments for the job and guarantee they work effectively collectively. Investing in a seamless course of with these instruments lets you begin sturdy and show worth rapidly, with room to evolve as you scale.
In my board proposal, I highlighted two important instruments: Atlan and ThoughtSpot. I defined that whereas we might handle with out them, they’d make a big distinction. I wished governance to change into embedded in our processes, and that as an alternative of assigning knowledge stewards with out clear route, we offered actionable stories and comprehensible knowledge. With correctly organized knowledge, governance turns into easy, and Atlan streamlines this course of.
I chosen Snowflake for its robustness and cheap pricing, and Fivetran for its dependable pipeline efficiency, which successfully handles our knowledge integration wants.
I carried out PowerBI for government stories, and ThoughtSpot for our self-serve knowledge wants. I’m a giant fan of ThoughtSpot, as a result of it permits customers to regulate their very own stories, decreasing the necessity for fixed modifications from the information workforce.
For orchestration, I take advantage of Airflow to handle pipelines, and DBT with GitLab for our code repository and CI/CD processes.
Why was Atlan an excellent match? Did something stand out throughout your analysis course of?
In my earlier group, I attempted utilizing open-source with DataHub, however its upkeep and improvement required important funding. Atlan stood out as a result of it’s plug-and-play, routinely constructing out miners that reveal beforehand unknown insights. It identifies and explains scripts we weren’t conscious of, saving time and decreasing technical debt from having to manually overview intensive code.
Atlan lets us observe and monitor what we’ve constructed, together with knowledge lineage and property. It’s invaluable for reviewing stories with no need to ask for code particulars—simply navigate by Atlan to see the report’s historical past. New workforce members also can perceive report development by Atlan.
For me, Atlan was a key piece of the puzzle.
I researched Collibra, Alation, and Atlan extensively, and Atlan was the clear selection. It felt designed for medium-sized enterprises and required minimal engineering effort. Given our scenario, it was essential to combine it from the beginning, fairly than as an afterthought. This allowed us to be taught and develop Atlan alongside our current methods, fairly than making an attempt to drive it into our pre-built setup.
I all the time make it some extent to fulfill with management groups at occasions to gauge their angle and willpower, and I don’t know of another gamers which are doing it in addition to Atlan. I used to be genuinely impressed by Atlan’s management workforce — not solely their ardour for the product but in addition their dedication to addressing my challenges and enhancing our scenario.
How are you planning to harness Atlan to reinforce your knowledge stack? What thrilling use circumstances and objectives do you take into account?
We’ve invested in an information vault mannequin for our knowledge warehouse, which feeds into an operational knowledge retailer, what I name the information mart. All our stories and metrics are constructed from this knowledge mart. In Atlan, we outline how one can assemble every little thing, so as soon as a metric is outlined, we are able to write the SQL to extract it from the mart.
We then create curated tables for shopper providers and gross sales organizations, enabling them to self-serve by way of ThoughtSpot. For detailed insights into the development and rationale of those metrics, we retailer that info in Atlan, which turns into our catalog.
As new folks come on board, I be sure that there’s no want for a handover. By default, we doc our processes as we go and construct methods that depart clear breadcrumbs for others to comply with. Atlan performs a vital position on this. We direct new workforce members to Atlan to assist them perceive how every little thing is constructed and what it’s constructed from. Atlan doesn’t simply spill out the code, it highlights the important thing objects, their utilization, and their significance.
One other main challenge includes making a complete glossary inside Atlan, serving as our single supply of reality. This surroundings permits enterprise customers to entry all company metrics and think about stories from Salesforce, PowerBI, and ThoughtSpot, all linked round key KPIs.
We’re additionally at present refining our knowledge lineage and mannequin descriptions. As we create new knowledge fashions, we replace descriptions incrementally fairly than in bulk. This ongoing effort helps be sure that our knowledge fashions are well-documented and simply comprehensible.
Do you’ve any recommendation to share along with your friends who’re beginning out in managing and organizing their knowledge property successfully?
Companies all the time discuss being knowledge pushed, however they don’t speak concerning the property that really drive the information. We would like info to stream in our group, however info can’t stream if it’s not organized persistently. And for me, instruments like Atlan are making it considerably simpler for us to arrange and talk what knowledge issues.
Don’t get me improper, Atlan isn’t a silver bullet. It received’t repair poor group inside your knowledge warehouse. Nevertheless, it does present a centralized place to outline and assess your processes, serving to you establish which of them are efficient and which of them want enchancment.
Atlan helped us decide the place to start out by figuring out our most vital tables and specializing in what was vital. For example, we discovered one desk crucial for every little thing we constructed, permitting us to prioritize it. We then assessed our stories and found that some we thought have been vital have been related solely to particular stories, not the broader context.
As we get delicate knowledge, we are able to additionally instantly flag it. If we get audited, we are able to merely pull up Atlan and say, “Hey, that is what we’ve got. That is how we handle our knowledge. That is what our knowledge property are.” So, for these dedicated to being data-driven, they should take care of their knowledge property and perceive what their knowledge property are.
Picture by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
