As a part of their efforts to continue to evolve as a modern digital organization, the organization partnered with BDO Digital in the Spring of 2016. Together, they successfully built the foundation for an Enterprise Data Warehouse that will meet their needs for current and future analytics capabilities by leveraging their local and cloud infrastructure.

Leveraging the Cloud to Access Data

During Phase 1 of the overall project plan, the organization worked with BDO Digital to design an architecture to utilize cloud technology. Once in the cloud, the next problem they tackled was a methodology to organize and analyze the abundance of data collected since its founding in the early 1900s. They wanted to analyze data relationships across the membership, finance, annual meetings, journals, and informatics, etc., thus, providing them a platform for making better decisions for charting the organization’s future.

They chose BDO Digital because they were seeking a partner that would bring the depth of knowledge necessary for designing their Enterprise Data Warehouse and expedite their journey toward becoming a data-driven enterprise. BDO Digital worked well with their internal team throughout the discovery process and the organization was convinced of its capabilities for reaching their goal.

Making Sense of The Data

The first step was to design and build a foundational Enterprise Data Platform for storing historical data in an accessible format through a semantic layer that presents data to end users for deep analytics. This was accomplished by implementing Tableau across all sectors. The organization and BDO Digital populated the platform with clean, relevant data following a laborious process of identifying, pulling, and normalization.

Enhanced Data Sets

Once the organization was able to successfully manage and utilize Phase 1 data, additional data sets were added. Expanded data included information related to grants, committees, research and education, and donations. Through the enhanced data set, the system facilitated additional insights and understanding – providing the business with the ability to make more sound business decisions, based on metrics, not speculation.

A Huge Step Forward in Becoming a Data-Driven Business

Working in collaboration with BDO Digital, the non-profit’s internal data team was able to deliver key foundational analytics capabilities by maximizing system performance while keeping costs down. It was accomplished via a hybrid infrastructure by integrating the organization’s data center and the cloud. As a result, they can seamlessly produce standardized dashboards and reports across the organization.

The organization’s internal team in collaboration with BDO Digital’s team were able to deliver the backend Enterprise Data Warehouse and the visualization tool – the foundational technology components of better analytics. The team used the foundational technology to execute its Enterprise Data Roadmap that included internal marketing events for introducing data analytics, ongoing educational data community events, departmental Open Lab sessions, Data Governance structure, and a process for building and enhancing their data analytics capabilities. The organization is executing on its plan for becoming a data-driven organization for both prescriptive and predictive analytics.

Knowing your organization is in need of modernization is often easy - Getting started on a tangible project is often the hardest part. Contact BDO Digital to discuss your business goals and we’ll explore options.