BI and Analytics with CloverDX

First things first - CloverDX isn't a BI tool. There are many other BI solutions that are more specialized and focus on just the analytics part of the data process, and deliver data visualizations, charts or dashboards.

But where CloverDX can really help with BI or analytics is in areas such as improving the quality of data your analytics are reporting on, automating data processes, and building BI workflows in a repeatable, scalable way.

Save time and cost by automating the mundane

A data integration platform such as CloverDX can making the mundane work around data analysis easier, faster and more automated. Steps such as retrieving data, validating, cleansing, blending or enriching data from disparate sources becomes far less manual, and highly-skilled data analysts can spend more time working on business problems and the actual analytics step.

Improve trust in reporting by protecting analysis from changes

Protecting against inconsistent data quality

Sometimes data for analysis might come from un-validated sources - think for example of data provided by a third party reseller that we need to include in our reporting. 

With CloverDX we can check the data quality before we perform the data analysis. In our third party reseller data example, we can verify that there is a transaction date with each record, and it's within the date range we're expecting. We can make sure the transaction amount is a positive number, and that the product category values are valid. 

This saves the analyst from having to perform these data quality checks every time they create their analysis code, and it's easily maintainable.

Protecting against changes in data location or structure

This modular approach can also protect the analysis part of the workflow against other changes. If the location of the data changes, it's simple to update the component that fetches the data, without touching the analysis code itself. 

Automating analytics processes

Streamlining delivery of results 

Once the analysis is done, the results may need to be delivered as an Excel file, or a Tableau data extract ready for visualization; perhaps via email or perhaps stored in an archive; or to all of these. By separating out the results delivery from the analysis itself, it becomes easier to configure and update. 

Recording analytics activity 

With an automated workflow, it's possible to record information about the analysis itself. When was the analysis run? Was it successful? Which data set was used? With a data integration platform, it's easy to log what was done, and record any errors with the process.

Repeatability

One of the fundamental concepts behind CloverDX is repeatability. And for analytics or business intelligence projects, it's rare to need to run the analysis just once. 

Whether there's a need to run analysis automatically at a set time, say daily or weekly, or to run the analysis every time new data arrives in the system, using a platform like CloverDX enables you to easily define when and how often to run the workflow. 

It's also possible to save time and ensure consistency in analytics by being able to repeat a workflow for ad-hoc BI queries. For example, maybe we want to run a different analysis on the exact same data set - we can use the same workflow to fetch the data, validate it and deliver the results, and simply swap in some new analytics code. 

Improve analysis with better data quality

Your business intelligence is only as good as the data you put into the analytics process. With CloverDX, you can design data flows that constantly monitor, validate, augment and automatically report and/or repair bad data that might otherwise creep into your analytics.

Data Quality with CloverDX

The data quality checks can all be automated in CloverDX workflows. So for example every incoming record can be checked against configured validity rules and thrown out of the process if it doesn't pass, along with a precise report on what went wrong. 

Faster analysis with an agile approach

CloverDX can help make your BI and analytics processes faster to create and adapt.

Adapt to new requirements quickly

The flexible, modular approach to CloverDX data workflows means it's simple to adopt changes and adapt to new requirements. CloverDX's visual interface enables you to combine and experiment with just a few clicks. 

Add new sources quickly

CloverDX's component approach means that connections to many data sources are available out of the box. And Clover's ability to code whenever you need means you can configure connections to almost any data source you can think of.  

Make analytics accessible

CloverDX components can be used to hide custom code and complexity, so once tailored components are created, then they can be used by less-technical users in a drag-and-drop way to easily harness the power of the code within. 

BI and Analytics Project Examples Using CloverDX

Identifying revenue leaks by consolidating data

A global logistics company needed a consolidated view on their disparate data in order to analyse where they were losing potential revenue. The project now handles billing data from more than 10 different systems, and the company can now track all billing information in a single place, with hourly updates and daily reports available to several users across the organization.

Project Highlights:

  • Brought inefficiencies to light
    • Hundreds of thousands of dollars invoiced after problematic records were fixed
    • Duplicate or incorrect data found and eliminated
    • Identifying incorrect billing led to enough savings in just 3 months to pay for the entire project
  • Data warehouse (Oracle) built to consolidate data
  • Centralized error management identifies problematic data records and set up rules for fixing them
  • Reporting platform (built on Jasper) lets team see information in almost real-time
    • No need to manually generate reports
    • No need for comparing results in Excel (a tedious, error-prone process)

Business intelligence platform leads to better marketing decisions

A large satellite TV company were struggling to get reliable analysis from static reporting. It was difficult to extract the data, difficult to run reports and difficult to get information to the people who needed it. 

With a data warehouse and a business intelligence platform built by CloverDX, users can generate reports, and information can be automatically distributed via email or a web interface.

Project Highlights:

  • Better view of data enables more informed marketing decisions
  • Data extracted from MagnaQuest ERP (Oracle), and loaded into data warehouse
  • Business intelligence platform based on Microsoft SQL Server offers easy access to aggregate data
  • Company can react quickly as maintainable data transformations can accommodate changes easily
  • Scheduling and monitoring enables automatic data flows and minimal system downtime 

Find out more about how CloverDX could help your BI or analytics project. Book a demo and we'll discuss your use case and answer any questions you have.

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