Improve Your Data Warehouse Productivity by 400 Percent

But Don’t Take My Word For It

Many of my blog posts pontificate on the benefits of automating your data warehouse. These benefits range from increasing the velocity of your data delivery to improving the rate of change of your data warehouse. Nevertheless, no matter how convincing my argument, I always feel there’s an air of skepticism to my claims. If only there was a credible, independent entity that could validate my musings.

Just the Facts Ma'am

My first thought was to look toward Sargent Joe Friday from the 1950’s TV show “Dragnet.” He typically used the phrase "All we want are the facts, ma’am,” when questioning female bystanders and witnesses during his investigations. He didn’t want hyperbole or exaggeration – just an accurate account of the situation at hand. Surely, those are exactly the character traits I needed to verify my data warehouse automation beliefs.


However, the main flaw in that plan is that Sargent Joe Friday was a fictional character who couldn’t help me realize my goal. Nevertheless, collaboration seems the right way to go, and my next best option was to partner with a real company that has a reputation for recording the facts. I chose to work with Nucleus Research. Nucleus Research (Nucleus) is a global provider of ROI-focused case studies, insights and facts that help high-tech professionals understand the real value of technology solutions. Nucleus was founded in 2000 and so has a wealth of experience delivering ROI reports and is the only technology research firm to gain registration with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA accreditation number: 108024) that ensures it’s ROI research can withstand the most detailed financial review.

Performing the Research

The first step when developing the ROI report was to find customers who were not only willing to participate in the research, but also happy to disclose their decision metrics. In addition, Nucleus likes to interview customers that have deployed the subject technology in production for a significant period. Luckily, I had the perfect customer in mind. Ewals Cargo Care (Ewals), a Netherlands-based logistics company, had recently completed the first stage of its cloud data warehouse migration.

Nucleus conducted several interviews with the Ewals project lead, Maikel Jaspers, a BI Engineer who was able to articulate the project timeline, identify the costs and verify the outcomes. I’d like to thank Maikel, again, because my ROI project would not have been possible without his help.

The Results Are In!

Nucleus carefully documented the project and identified several significant findings, including the payback period, ROI and developer productivity. No surprises for guessing developer productivity numbers, because you read that in the blog’s title, but, in addition, Ewals also estimated that it could save 75 percent of the data warehouse development costs, too.


Moreover, Nucleus identified the cost benefit ratio, cumulative net benefit numbers, net cashflows and highlighted key areas where Ewals realized payback. Nucleus concluded its report with lessons learned and recommendations.

Seeing Is Believing

If you’d like to get a copy of the research report, then follow this link; however, I’d also like you to register for our upcoming webinar, titled “Data Warehouse Automation: Faster Insights, Better Payoff.” In this session, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from Nucleus’ research manager Daniel Elman as he describes the methodology and findings. He’ll also walk through the financial model and give you the opportunity to ask questions about the results. In addition, I’ll walk through the Qlik solution to clearly identify where data warehouse automation can boost the agility, productivity and ROI for your analytics projects. At the end of the session, you’ll really understand how to build a business case for data warehouse automation by identifying ROI, payback, TCO (total cost of ownership) and other metrics. It’s going to be a great webinar.

Conclusion

A cloud data warehouse gives you amazing agility in a digital-first world; however, it can deliver so much more when deployed with data warehouse automation. The increase in agility and data delivery improves your time-to-insight and delivers fantastic ROI. To hear the full details of Nucleus Research’s finding, register for the Qlik webinar “Data Warehouse Automation: Faster Insights, Better Payoff.”


How can #datawarehouse automation boost the agility, productivity and ROI of your #analytics projects? @cbearman can tell you.

 

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