This case study details a large enterprise organization’s need for maturity in its data management capabilities.
AIM Consulting built a concept leveraging the data collected to understand the current state of data management maturity and ultimately build a self-service reporting system.
Key Takeaways:
- 90-page enterprise data maturity roadmap
- AWS Enterprise Data Architecture Concepts
- Streamlined BI reporting tools (consolidate data visualization tools based on ad-hoc business needs and reporting usage)
Case Study Contents:
- Situation: Need For Data Management Maturity
- Challenges: Leadership Buy-In, Ground-Up System Construction
- Solution: Assessment Leads To Multi-Year Roadmap
- Results: Advancing Data Management Capabilities
Situation: Need For Data Management Maturity
A large enterprise organization (Client) provides transportation and storage services for companies operating in the natural gas and liquids industry.
The Client had accumulated a substantial amount of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) data used throughout the company, but they were unsure how, where, and when it was being used.
The Client wanted to leverage this data to understand where its data management maturity currently was and ultimately find ways to build self-service reporting with limited support from the IT Team.
AIM Consulting partnered with them to build a concept leveraging the data collected to understand current state of data management maturity and ultimately build a self-service reporting system with limited support from the IT Team.
AIM Consulting was brought on board to provide an assessment due to our industry-leading experience in data and analytics and our background in the natural gas sector.
Challenges: Leadership Buy-In, Ground-Up System Construction
With this being an IT-funded effort, getting buy-in to the idea from leadership would take time and convincing.
Despite the size of the Client, their data management practices didn’t meet their expectations. They had not yet developed robust data governance and standardization of tools, nor initiated a plan to build an enterprise platform.
The Client needed a system to be constructed from the ground up.
Solution: Assessment Leads To Multi-Year Roadmap
AIM Consulting deployed a team designed to execute on the project charter, composed of Data Strategists and others who quickly initiated a discovery phase of the project by conducting two-week interviews with stakeholders and analyzing the current data flow state.
The goal? To evaluate existing business processes, how the Client leverages data, and identify critical areas of improvement.
Understanding the Client’s situation, AIM Consulting quickly went to work, documenting, formalizing learnings gained throughout the interviews, and providing scores on skills assessments and data management maturity assessment.
AIM Consulting consolidated all of its learnings with a robust amount of information and offered recommendations in a comprehensive, multi-year roadmap for the Client to follow.
During the assessment stage, AIM Consulting discovered difficulties in the Client’s technical abilities and broke out a data roadmap into twelve phases.
These phases can be summarized into three separate categories:
Our Process
Category 1
Foundational
AIM Consulting worked with the Director of IT, Infrastructure Manager, and Reporting and Analytics Manager to set a data governance strategy, data taxonomy, data cleansing, and reporting.
Category 2
Structured Data
With a foundation in place, the team decided to outline a structured data format for the team to use on the AWS Cloud Platform. This included Self-Service Analytics, Machine Learning, and Master Data Management.
Category 3
Unstructured Data
The Client’s existing unstructured data lacked processes and guardrails. AIM Consulting included recommendations for implementation of Microsoft 365 SharePoint, File Migration, and Enterprise Search.
Technology Used:
Results: Advancing Data Management Capabilities
The Client now has a roadmap and is executing on an AWS prototype architecture that will allow them to utilize its existing data better. The prototype consists of a build-out of the streaming of SCADA data into an AWS S3 bucket.
The AIM Consulting team incorporated Athena on top of S3 to open up the ability to query the information and build out reports. This will allow the Client to do more with its data.
After a successful entry phase, the Client’s data management future is looking bright. The team is ramping up with education, certifications, and training that will allow them to build out a mature enterprise data mindset.
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