Realizing the ROI of data automation

In our recent ‘Guide to DataOps’ series, we explored the four steps to implementing DataOps, how to automate, and crucially, whether to build or buy your own data automation platform.

So after you’ve done all of this, what results can you expect to see?

Leveraging previously hard-to-use data to drive growth is an exciting new stage in the evolution of digital media. Whether you’re in the Sales, Revenue Operations, AdOps, Data Analytics, Marketing or other business team, by combining data expertise with the wealth of fine-grained data available will enable you to move the needle on your organization’s performance and growth.

As data-driven enterprises continue on this trajectory, compelling ROI data from Switchboard customers is proving the value of DataOps in the industry. Here are just some examples of the ROI achieved by two of our customers:

Financial Times

• Stood up sell-through forecast in one week
• Stood up CPH (cost per hour) ops solution in three weeks
• Rolled out real-time forecasting available to all yield, planning, and ops teams, eliminating a manual bottleneck of four-person days per forecast
• Large-scale data automation and governance was delivered via a hosted platform, requiring no additional developer investment

Dotdash Meredith

• Two billion rows of daily data harnessed to drive ad revenue for brand partners
• Six months development and data preparation saved
• One source of truth for revenue reporting across 40 brands
• No additional developer headcount required

Bringing the diversity and volume of data that exists within a data-driven organization into a single revenue-driving software system isn‘t easy. But the rewards are worth the effort. Once the operational foundation is in place to turn raw data into foundational data and KPIs, you can move rapidly towards advanced data analytics such as working with event-level data. At that point, granular insights such as user behavior cohorts, advertising performance, or fine-grained revenue forecasting will be within your grasp.

It‘s important to make an honest assessment of your company‘s skills and existing infrastructure to decide which approach will be right for you. When the time comes, use that same critical eye to gauge what kind of data consumption you expect in order to pick the right solution architecture for your business.

At Switchboard, we understand that the most difficult challenges when working with big data involve the engineering effort necessary to maintain flexible, scalable and operationally robust data flows. Using a trusted turnkey data automation platform will help keep valuable technical staff focused on helping make decisions instead of learning a complex new engineering competency that quite simply takes too much time out of their day.