The appropriate place to start this blog post is by defining what data engineering is. Untitled thinks of this topic as a mix between data analytics and data architecture with the goal to build systems, applications and processes for collecting, transforming and directing data to desired destinations.
There are a variety of reasons why this would be important to an organization, but we’ll outline three reasons your company needs data engineering.
#1. You don’t have data
First and foremost, if your organization does not have data, data engineering will be the method for setting up systems and building applications to collect data. This is critical to any organization regardless of scale.
Data should be the catalyst by which all critical decision making happens, without it, a company is relying on subjective choices to guide operations. This is a dangerous place to be given the error prone nature of human beings and there are plenty of places in history to point to that gut intuitions were the downfall of great organizations.
#2. You have data, but it’s not in a usable format
Similar to how ordering furniture online that comes disassembled in a box, your data may not come in a format out of the box that you can immediately use. It takes blueprints and tools to put the data sources (or furniture) together in a way that unpacks, transforms and assembles the data into a usable format. These processes then need to be automated for efficiency, especially as a company scales.
If you go from receiving one piece of furniture in the mail each day to 10,000 pieces, you need an engineer to build processes that scale your intake and automate as many of the components as possible.
Data engineering is an on-going evolution of data processes as a company grows and becomes more data-centric. It is essential for data pipelines to adapt to the needs of a dynamic business environment and should be constructed with the flexibility to change based upon these required needs.
#3. Real time decisions require real time data
Just because you have applications and systems for collecting data, and processes for transforming that data into a usable format, does not mean that your data engineering journey is complete. Untitled engages with many organizations on speeding up their time to insights.
We’ve seen many companies that are stuck in holding patterns where it may take months for data tables to update and have new analytics to run. This can happen for a variety of reasons such as outdated data architecture, inefficient ETL processes, technical debt that’s slowing down run-times and hasn’t been revisited, sub-par collection methods, etc.
It is critical that the overall data feedback loop provides organizations real time insights, or as close as possible, especially if decision making needs to happen in real time.
How Untitled Can Help
Data engineering is here to stay and will only become more important as technology progresses and the amount of data generated on a daily basis exponentially increases. Organizations can be intimidated by data engineering due to the break-neck speed by which the field has evolved over the past ten years.
The important thing to keep in mind is that despite how distant you may feel from the concept, having the ability to control and model data near real time is critical to your company’s success. That’s why we’ve outlined our three reasons your company needs data engineering.
If you need assistance with data engineering, you’ve arrived at the right place. Untitled is here to be your data engineering partner for any data problems you may be experiencing and guide you along your data journey. For more information, please reach out through the start form.
