“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on.” This is one of our favourite quotes from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and also, a fitting adage for the work that our team at Vertice has always done and continues to do in partnership with Oracle Analytics.
As Chief Data Science Officer and Analytics Success Manager, respectively, at Vertice, our job is to shine a light in the dark places. In our jobs, we are in some ways tour guides waving a flashlight, helping companies find the path to start their analytics journey, and then leading them as far as they need to go until we can safely hand the source of light directly to them so they can continue on their way.
Analytics is a Journey
Data analytics isn’t only a technical journey. It’s also a people journey. The tech is a system that supports the people in the company and enables their success. So, when enterprises make the decision to adopt Oracle Analytics for their analytics solution, we offer the advice, know-how and support to ensure the people are successful.
When we work with a client, we remind them at the outset that analytics is a journey. We start at the very beginning, setting our core process and foundation. When a company comes to us and says they want to invest in an analytics journey, we make sure they understand that you have to walk before you can run, which means you need to start the journey with a clear understanding of goals and objectives, as those set direction through an augmented analytics project.
With Oracle Analytics, we can be a lot more agile and responsive to companies who want to see the art of the possible. The technology is a tool we wield to create an environment where we can very rapidly have their data secured and show them the rich potential impact data science can provide. Rather than us giving them a blank piece of paper, we can actually offer them a concrete vision of what analytics can mean for their business.
Beginning with a Question
The roll-out plan is a critical piece of our work that can set the tone for an entire journey. To build this roll-out plan efficiently, we start with a critical question: “What is the business problem you are trying to solve?” This forms the core of all of our early conversations with clients. Then we help them navigate via a number of packaged offerings.
A lot of data science projects either fail or stall because they lose sight of the business problem, they set out to solve. So, we always make sure we define this question at the outset so we can show a solid return on investment for our clients and clearly demonstrate the benefit of analytics.
Creating a Solid Data Strategy
Once we have identified the business goals and know which of our packaged offerings we’ll use to reach them, we get data governance in place. We start with standard processes and make sure there’s a data strategy in place.
Once the plan is solidified, we can move toward the next layer, which is data management. Generally, we put in place Oracle’s Autonomous Data Warehouse to map where data is coming from and bring data integration through it.
What sets our work apart at Vertice and makes it so rewarding is the deep collaboration and close relationships we build with our clients. We don’t just head off into a dark room and crunch numbers. Rather, we work together to identify a problem, set deliverables and then solve that problem. Our services are bespoke for each client and the only way to provide such a curated and personalized solution is to work closely together, effectively co-designing them.
Eaglemoss: Aligning Data and Processes
Last year we worked with Eaglemoss, to help them sift through the darkness of their data and bring it to light through analytics. In the process, they became like family.
Eaglemoss is the world’s leading collectables company and partwork publisher. They operate in 13 languages, on five continents. They make items that people love, which makes them a company easy to love as well. They are a one-stop-shop for superhero figurines, for Harry Potter and Marvel collectables, and for books, accessories and other fun items.
When Vertice started working with Eaglemoss, they had identified a significant business problem: their data was stored across multiple regions and in various places, and timely access was a problem. They were working with not one but several data partners, each using a different format to report and provide information. They needed consistency and a single version of the truth.
The need for a cloud analytics and data management solution was strong from the outset. And Oracle Analytics Cloud, alongside the Autonomous Data Warehouse, provided a clear solution. OAC offered Natural Language Generation and Natural Language Processing. It offered citizen data science access, data flows, and data preparation and enhancement. And the Autonomous Data Warehouse was scalable, with a fast load of data and simple monitoring.
So we utilized Oracle Data Integrator on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, loaded Eaglemoss’s data to the Autonomous Data Warehouse, and then utilized and extracted the load and transform approach to enable additional data quality and standardization. We used three data sources with key customer information, integrating into Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse. We provided consistent and accurate governed analytics through dashboards in Oracle Analytics Cloud. We also provided training on self-service analytics, which enabled Eaglemoss to add forecasting to their analytics and increase user adoption.
Samuel Sonnenfeld, digital and IT director at Eaglemoss, said it well: “With OAC, we went from dark data to enlightened data in an easy manner. Now, we can better understand our customers, bring a better quality of service, and increase our sales.”
There’s so much data today that it can feel like a huge storm darkening the horizon.
But whenever the darkness rises, analytics can be the light that rises to meet it. With the right tools and the right support team, you too can be an Analytics wizard.
To learn more about our analytics best practices, tune into our session at the Oracle Analytics Summit here.
This article is co-authored by Dr Abi Giles-Haigh, Vertice Chief Data Science Officer & Oracle ACE Director), and David Heraty, Analytics Success Manager at Vertice. If you have any questions relating to your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by clicking below, or by [email protected].
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch
