Modernize to Monetize:
An Analytics Platform case study
Hello, We can help accelerate your AI/ML innovation charter
“Organizations can no longer afford to be content with a traditional analytics platform investment that doesn’t contribute to their innovation charter. The risk of not acting or acting in yesterday’s innovation paradigms are far too great.”
Modernize to monetize
How GJ Consulting helped a big tech giant’s FastTrack team modernize their analytics platform
A big tech giant’s FastTrack analytics team is the one-stop-shop for all data and enterprise analytics related to end-user-computing product stack and security software. The team’s invaluable reporting and analytics drive the core business operations of the FastTrack organization, partners, sales & marketing, customer success and service departments. The analytics are also instrumental to the ELT (Extended Leadership Team) and SLT (Senior Leadership Team). With a complex landscape of the Fortune 500 business, the team manages an analytics platform consisting of over 15 different applications and more than 380 databases. To address security, agility, innovation, and optimization concerns, leadership decided to modernize their analytics platform in the summer of 2022. The current limitations impeded the launch of major AI/ML projects and other innovation initiatives. Entrusted with this responsibility, GJ Consulting aimed to modernize the analytics platform and accelerate their AI/ML innovation charter.
Problem statement
Modernization was key
Silo-ed application landscape and teams
GJ Consulting immediately recognized the pain points from the existing analytics platform. Redundant, monolithic and disconnected data sets, compute engines, design practices, and more; silos meant multiple versions of the truth across different applications.
Performance issues
A key focus for improvement would need to be around performance. It would take five plus days for data processing of a billion rows. In addition, the entire landscape had to be restricted to only the top 380k FastTrack customers. This was due to performance constraints, limiting the team to focus on just a portion of their customers.
Evident lack of agility
The lack of agility drove business decisions for far too long. Data mart implementation took one year, data warehouse clean-up was two years, and the least complex enhancement was estimated between 8-12 weeks to complete. These limitations all needed to be addressed.
Our solution
An innovative approach
GJ Consulting brilliantly delivered MIDAS, the Intelligence, Data and Analytics System within an impressively short timeframe. This state-of-the-art analytics platform has revolutionized user experience by offering a host of modernized features, surpassing the implementation plans of rival proposals. Notably, our solution was not only completed in record time, but also at a fraction of the cost. GJ Consulting truly emerged as the perfect fit for the needs of the FastTrack team.
Why us
Leading up to the modernization program, the incumbent vendor(s) had taken almost three years to upgrade just one of the 15 applications in the landscape. Frustrated at the lack of progress, GJ Consulting was entrusted with the remaining work. GJ took over the program in month 22 of 24 and completed the remaining 40% of the scope in just two months.
As a result of this success and the ensuing credibility, GJ was invited to bid on the modernization proposal. GJ’s innovative solution approach, system design, lean implementation plan and aggressive timeline helped us win the project.
What we did
GJ Consulting built MIDAS, a one-of-its-kind cloud analytics platform, in a little over a year. MIDAS was built on four key design cornerstones – a flexible, dynamic, scalable data ingestion framework, a Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) driven data processing engine, a secure and scalable data storage layer and purpose fit analytics architecture.
MIDAS was built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform using ADF and Synapse DW for data movement and processing, ADLS for storage, Purview for data quality, Power platform for analytics, Synapse Spark and ML studio for AI and ML and Open AI for generative AI and Microsoft Fabric for user empowerment and advanced analytics. The impact MIDAS made on the business is shown in the table below.
What we did
GJ Consulting built the MIDAS, a one-of-its-kind cloud analytics platform, in a little over a year. MIDAS was built on four key design cornerstones – a flexible, dynamic, scalable data ingestion framework, a Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) driven data processing engine, a secure and scalable data storage layer and purpose fit analytics architecture.
MIDAS was built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform using ADF and Synapse DW for data movement and processing, ADLS for storage, Purview for data quality, Power platform for analytics, Synapse Spark and ML studio for AI and ML and Open AI for generative AI and Microsoft Fabric for user empowerment and advanced analytics. The impact MIDAS made on the business is shown in the table below.
How we did it
We differentiated ourselves in our implementation approach through
three aspects:
Product Horsepower: Our business consultants immersed themselves into the big tech giant’s team to learn and become SMEs of the business, processes, and data themselves.
Engineering Horsepower: Our architects and engineers leveraged their extensive experience in the Microsoft Azure stack building MPP architectures to design a flexible, dynamic, scalable, and high-performing system.
Execution Horsepower: Our Project Managers followed a true agile approach, developing the solution in a modular fashion rather than monolithic (slices not layers).
Financials
Business value impact
Project Cost
NPV
IRR
Net Benefits
What
Leaders are saying about our work
Before and After
Stats behind MIDAS
Bottom line
The North-star Impact with MIDAS
From rudimentary manual silos to bullseye analytics
- Unleash the power of data – real time analytics
- Bust siloes, no handcrafted stale metrics
Focused on the highest quality and client experience
- Working with all facets of GJ as your champion to give 360’ view on Data
Going above and beyond the intended business value
- Proactive leadership – focused on outcomes
- Trusted Advisor striking balance between ROI, value and FastTrack mission
Predictive Analysis is a reality, empowering the team to do more
- Amp it up to become predictive / prescriptive
- AI/ML compatible, business leverage and strategic alignment with MS roadmap
