Why we need to centralize data

The Changing Landscape of Startup Tools

The average startup today uses 10-12 different services. This is vastly different from just a few years ago when life was a lot simpler.

‍

Every startup is different and has its own set of unique needs. Tools like Salesforce, Zoom, Slack, Pipedrive, Google Docs, Stripe, Twilio, Intercom, Typeform, FB Ads, Linked In, Zendesk, ConvertKit, Squarespace, Google Analytics, the list goes on have become household names in the startup ecosystem.

‍

Limitations of Out-of-the-Box Reporting

While all of these tools are pretty invested in analytics and have some reporting capabilities it turns out that the piece of the pie these tools are exposed to is getting smaller and smaller. Facebook is no longer the only marketing platform you use, All of your customer data is not in Salesforce and Google analytics isn’t installed on every digital property your brand is featured on.

‍

What this means is that the out of the box reporting you get from these tools is getting less valuable. It might be enough to get started with but quickly it becomes limiting.

‍

The Need for Cross-Tool Insights

Very often we need to answer questions that are spread across a variety of these different tools. Some of these questions are: What is the LTV of customers that came from a promotional campaign vs organic traffic? Or What was the implication of last month’s product recall? What % of those customers ordered from us again?

‍

Achieving Data Autonomy

In order to answer non trivial questions we need to be able to answer questions across a variety of different data sources in a quick and efficient manner. Pushing data from one tool to another isn’t the answer either. That’s another short term fix but limits the type of questions you can ask.

‍

True freedom comes from being able to answer any question you want, in any format you want at the speed of a click without depending on an analyst to run an ad hoc query for you.

‍

This freedom adds a level of visibility into the business. Visibility is the precursor for improvement. With better visibility we begin to ask better questions. And with better questions and insights come the optimizations needed to increase revenues.

‍

In order to build this data engine we need to be able to ingest data from all of your different sources, combine and clean these data sets & then structure them to answer holistic questions.

‍

Centralizing your data and extracting value from it requires having the right people resources to build out your infrastructure capabilities and then start to migrate your business into the self-service ecosystem.

‍

In the next 10 years every business will have a data hire…