Enabling Democratization and Accessibility with External Data Marketplace

For a $15B+ tools company, we designed and built an External Data Marketplace, enabling the democratization and accessibility of data across the organization.

Situation

• The client, a major global tools and hardware manufacturer, lacked a cohesive external data management strategy. • Different departments managed their own external data acquisition and usage, leading to significant fragmentation in data accessibility. • This fragmentation often resulted in overlapping external data purchases across departments. • We were engaged to design and develop an External Data Marketplace to democratize data across the organization.

Approach

• Gather Business Requirements: Documented external data structure and data ingestion requirements through deep-dive analysis and interviews with vendors and key stakeholders. • Identify Use Cases: Defined users, pain points, needs, and user journeys to inform the end-state design. • Design Marketplace (Front- and Back-end): Designed a front-end data shopping experience in Collibra based on user experience workshops and wireframes. Developed the back-end architecture in Snowflake in collaboration with the client's IT and Enterprise Data teams. • Build Alongside Client: Empowered the client to own the marketplace and continue building upon the data sets included at launch.

Impact

• Developed and launched the Data Marketplace with a Collibra front-end fully integrated with a Snowflake back-end, creating a full-lifecycle data shopping experience accessible to all 60,000+ employees in the organization. • Set the foundation for the integration and accessibility of external data sources, starting with 7 data domains and 12 data sources. • Enabled the scaling and automation of a Market Demand Sensing model, a parallel effort to improve forecast accuracy by over 25%. • Empowered the SI COE and IT Enterprise Data teams with the foundation to further scale the Marketplace across more data sources and use cases. • Improved data accessibility and reduced redundancy in external data purchases, leading to more efficient data utilization and cost savings.