Driving Information Discovery and Enhancing Context with Atlan
The Lively Metadata Pioneers collection options Atlan prospects who’ve just lately accomplished an intensive analysis of the Lively Metadata Administration market. Paying ahead what you’ve discovered to the following information chief is the true spirit of the Atlan group! So that they’re right here to share their hard-earned perspective on an evolving market, what makes up their trendy information stack, progressive use instances for metadata, and extra.
On this installment of the collection, we meet Ted Andersson, Director of Enterprise Intelligence at CouponFollow, who shares how CouponFollow’s important enterprise progress has pushed comparable progress of their information, how he and his workforce evaluated the Lively Metadata Administration market, and the way Atlan can function the “glue” between their information practitioners and customers.
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 Information & Analytics?
I’ve an instructional background in arithmetic and statistics, graduating with a Grasp’s in Statistics. I’ve been focused on information for so long as I can keep in mind, so it was a pure factor for me to go from working within the statistics realm to working within the information realm.
My profession in information began at a small influencer advertising firm, the place I used to be first launched to affiliate marketing online and the tech world. From there, my journey has taken me via varied industries and roles. I’ve labored on tasks starting from name quantity projections and optimum staffing ranges at a tax and accounting agency, to growing a chatbot for buyer assist questions. I additionally had a stint at an EMS companies firm, serving to them transition their software program from on-premise to the cloud.
I returned to Affiliate by becoming a member of Rakuten Rewards, and right here I’m at CouponFollow, the place I’m the Director of Enterprise Intelligence, chargeable for something Information. Wherever there’s any information that’s created, modified, reworked, or visualized at CouponFollow, my workforce is chargeable for it. That workforce encompasses Information Engineering, conventional evaluation, and even the early levels of pushing into Machine Studying and Information Science tasks.
Would you thoughts describing CouponFollow?
CouponFollow has historically been a coupon and deal website. Our founder is an skilled in web optimization and he’d been rising CouponFollow.com for greater than 10 years, however with the pandemic there was an enormous surge in curiosity in coupons and on-line buying.
As the corporate continued to mature, CouponFollow began to herald a a lot bigger workforce, together with me, who was introduced in to begin the info workforce. On the time, they had been working with a consultancy that had gotten all of the “plumbing” in place, however they wanted somebody to assist set the imaginative and prescient and technique for information at CouponFollow.
An important a part of our enterprise is natural search. When somebody goes to Google and kinds in one thing like “Macy’s Coupon,” we need to be as excessive as doable in that rating. We use Affiliate to monetize the clicking and that’s an important a part of our enterprise.
That being stated, we’re at a spot now the place we’re beginning to diversify, shifting into the whitelabeling house with an providing for CouponFollow to construct branded buying experiences for choose companions. Clients for this providing may be information or content material websites, the place you see coupons and buying as a part of their providing.
We’ve a number of totally different methods, making an attempt to scale a enterprise away from simply being centered completely on natural search, towards extra alternatives.
What does your information stack appear to be?
We’ve Snowflake, dbt, and we use Sigma for visualization. CouponFollow was acquired a couple of yr in the past by a bigger firm known as System1, and so they’re a Tableau store, so we use a little bit Tableau to accommodate their wants, and use Sigma for our personal reporting. Past that, we use Snowplow for real-time occasions, and a device known as Indicative for visualizing how our site visitors is doing in actual time.
Why seek for an Lively Metadata Administration answer? What was lacking?
This began off once I requested my workforce to doc dashboards and information fashions, and they’d create one thing in Confluence. Primary, no person checked out it, and quantity two, by the point it was written, it appeared prefer it was already out-of-date. So the method was simply not scalable. We might construct a dashboard, then doc it, however as quickly as somebody modified that dashboard, the documentation could be out-of-date. When someone would go to get a solution, the documentation was not giving them what they wanted.
Moreover, definitions themselves could be all over. One individual may consider Click on-through Price (CTR) to imply one factor, and a unique workforce thinks of it as one thing else, and so they every have their very own dashboards which have CTR, however they aren’t aligned.
When these groups aren’t aligned, they ask “What’s the BI Group doing?” or “Why are they saying that” and you find yourself with numerous questions and confusion. CouponFollow ingests an incredible quantity of knowledge from all types of various locations, and it’s very difficult to maintain observe of all of it.
Due to all of this, a device like Atlan actually grew to become top-of-mind.
Why was Atlan a great match? Did something stand out throughout your analysis course of?
We started once I talked to someone who was working with Atlan and really useful it. Due to that, Atlan was the start line in our search, however we at all times love to do our due diligence.
So I did some buying round to take a look at the opposite choices, like Alation, Castor, and Collibra, and had conversations with all these corporations. A few of them definitely seem to be they’ve good instruments, however they may be centered simply on very massive organizations. That’s not us, and that’s not what we had been searching for. So, it got here all the way down to Atlan and Castor.
Castor supplied a reduced fee under what Atlan was charging. However I believe what pushed me and my workforce over the sting for Atlan was it simply looks like Atlan is the extra complete, state-of-the-art device, and that Castor is enjoying catch-up. They simply seem to be they’re a little bit bit behind Atlan.
And I appreciated the gross sales method of Atlan. Usually talking, I didn’t discover the workforce to be pushy or “salesy”. It was extra like “That is our device. We all know what we’re about, we stand behind what now we have, and we need to work with you as a associate.”
Generally we’ll get these bizarre gross sales pitches speaking about options which can be coming within the pipeline, possibly in six months, possibly by no means, saying, “Effectively when you go together with us we’ll be good in two years.” Or there’s throwing shade on the competitors.
The Atlan pitch wasn’t about that. I discovered Atlan to be very direct, simple, and that you’re what you’re and also you’re assured in your product. I like working with corporations like that.
What do you propose on creating with Atlan? Do you’ve gotten an concept of what use instances you’ll construct, and the worth you’ll drive?
My workforce is within the planning levels of a fairly large reorganization. The function of knowledge at CouponFollow has grown tremendously from what was initially known as the Enterprise Intelligence workforce, however we’re actually a Information Engineering workforce.
We began with pulling information into the warehouse, and constructing some restricted visualization and reporting. Now we’re in a spot the place we’ve gotten traction, and there’s numerous totally different instructions to go in, numerous information, and numerous scale. So the primary precedence is getting this reorganization accomplished so we will account for all these new, totally different processes we’re following with our information.
I would like Atlan to be the glue that pulls all of this collectively, and supply a single, shared place the place all people can go to know the info, the way it flows, and the place it comes from. Our first three months contain rolling Atlan out to my very own workforce, and never an excessive amount of finish consumer or enterprise stakeholder involvement but. We’ll use it each day, perceive what’s in Atlan, after which we’ll do restricted rollouts to particular stakeholders who’re a bit extra data-savvy to get them engaged.
Down the highway, I’d prefer to see our enterprise customers empowered to make use of Atlan as a form of “social place” the place they’ll are available and make a remark if one thing appears to be like bizarre. If they’ve questions like “What’s the supply?” or “Who’s the proprietor?” they’ll do their very own exploration, and so they’ll know the place information is coming from, and which individual to speak to.
Proper now, if we don’t give enterprise customers a hyperlink to the dashboard they’re searching for, it’s very onerous for them to search out one thing on their very own. Atlan can be an excellent place for them to seek for one thing like the preferred dashboards to allow them to perceive how they may use them. That’s the sort of habits I’d prefer to see extra of.
Did we miss something?
For the needs of anybody studying that’s looking for the fitting device, I’d say the differentiating issue with Atlan is its place out there. It’s this “candy spot” the place I believe Atlan can work with any firm, whether or not it’s an organization that’s our measurement or an early stage startup, so long as they’ve considerably of a knowledge stack. And I can see it rising to assist somebody like Procter & Gamble, as properly.
I believe Atlan can develop with our firm because it grows, too. The product is properly built-out, and any options I wish to have seen in my wishlist had been already there. There wasn’t something missing the place we felt we must purchase early, then sit and await options to come back on-line.
So I believe there’s a novel worth proposition that the competitors can’t fairly match. Even with their reductions, it was form of a no brainer to go together with Atlan.
Photograph by Julio Lopez on Unsplash
