The Data and Analytics Life Hack
I am fascinated by life-hacks. They’re innovative, born out of curiosity, and useful (some of them anyway) - but most important of all – life hacks are efficient. A good life hack gives us back some of our precious time.
Despite being more of a ‘free-spirit’ type, I’m constantly on the lookout for opportunities to become more efficient which is why Incorta impresses me so much as an alternative data warehouse and analytics solution. Incorta addresses many of the time-intensive aspects of the data lifecycle, effectively life hacking the very process by which we approach data warehousing and analytics delivery. Let’s explore how.
The Old Way
The data warehouse workflow outlined below is the standard approach we’re all used to. The process is clearly defined, and it functions – more or less.
This approach is familiar, but so are its drawbacks: it is slow, labor-intensive, and restrictive. Without a better alternative, many organizations have accepted the limitations and kept chugging along. This seems like an unsustainable model.
Drowning in Data
As organizations strive to harness their ever-growing data volumes, these massive amounts of data overwhelm legacy tools and systems. Organizations have more data at their disposal than ever before, but much of it is locked away in plain sight.
Supply and Demand
To make matters worse, the demand for analytical insights can easily outpace organizational capacity to supply analytics within the confines of the traditional approach. In some bizarre inverted way, an organization stacked with fully-engaged end users eager for robust analytics becomes a negative. IT cannot respond quickly enough to sufficiently address the constantly evolving, data-laden, self-service oriented needs of modern organizations.
Disappointment
A third and more nefarious drawback exists here: lowered expectations. Unfortunately, when end users grow accustomed to waiting hours (let’s be honest, days, weeks, or never) for their report or dashboard, the organizational culture is at risk. It’s a situation ripe for frustration at the very least, and resigned acceptance at the worst. An expensive data warehouse that delivers a fraction of its analytics capacity to a user community who expects that and nothing more is a problem. And there’s no sign of letting up. The proportionate gap between analytics asked for and analytics provided will only continue to widen within the traditional approach.
A Better Way
Incorta connects to data sources directly, bypasses the need for ETL, the need for a data warehouse, and the need for intensive modeling. Powered by in-memory analytics and Direct Data Mapping, Incorta delivers remarkable performance and massive improvements in query times (we’re talking hours to seconds), all without needing to transform, reshape, or aggregate the data.
(Note: if you’re looking for a more technical perspective on the benefits of Incorta, my colleagues wrote excellent posts on the general benefits of Incorta and ways to effectively connect Incorta with Cognos Analytics.)
A Good Problem to Have
Incorta offers a life-hack to the old way of tackling the data warehouse problem. It poses a significant opportunity to deliver incredible speed, insight, and simplicity. It also presents a good problem - if you augmented or even replaced your data warehouse with this kind of solution - how would you invest all of that time saved?
A Simple Challenge
We believe in this solution so much that we offer a complimentary one-week engagement to get customers up and running with Incorta. We call it the ‘Data Warehouse in a Week.’ So I offer this challenge: if you can identify some other way to realize the kinds of gains that Incorta delivers, then go and do that. But if you can’t find any other way to realize greater freedom for IT, accelerated BI, and more time back in your day, then let’s talk.
Next Steps
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