“Data-driven” is more than a buzzword. It’s a mindset and functional practice that infuses every part of a business. While most business leaders aspire to be data-driven, many don’t have the requisite understanding, tools, or corporate culture to achieve it.
Data-driven companies enable and empower all teams—regardless of technical skill—to use and analyze data effectively. This approach necessitates robust governance to ensure data remains current and accurate. To truly democratize data in a governed way, however, companies must liberate their IT teams from tedious manual processes so they can act as data storytellers and strategists, bridging critical gaps in understanding across the organization.
At Coalesce, we’re on a mission to bring IT and business teams together to collaborate and solve problems with data. Whether you’re pitching Coalesce to leadership or want to communicate the value of other tools in your stack that share our philosophy, we’ve outlined five key benefits that executives most appreciate about Coalesce, and how it can help move your enterprise closer to being truly data-driven.
#1: Coalesce unites the technical and business sides
“Siloed teams no longer work culturally,” says Matt Florian, Cloud Analytics Practice Director at Comerit. “The business side is a consumer and producer of data now—they need something that lets them be part of the solution. That’s how you create growth.”
Siloed teams are increasingly problematic in a competitive environment that requires adaptability and scalability. When insulation is the norm, there is less collaboration and transparency. This hampers productivity and speed, and innovation stays out of reach.
On the other hand, when all business units can confidently access, interpret, and work with the same data to solve problems, they reduce friction and catalyze innovation.
“Coalesce is one of few platforms I am aware of that enables teams to collaborate on data regardless of their technical ability,” Florian continues. “With Coalesce, we have a common language, we have a common view, and we are able to bring the railroad tracks together.”
This is possible thanks to the flexibility of Coalesce’s visual interface and code-first capabilities. Skilled data architects and engineers can efficiently build data pipelines to accommodate even the most complex use cases and workloads, while less-technical business teams can contribute equally to data projects with full visibility into data lineage, building trust in the data—and the data team—behind their dashboards.
#2: Coalesce is visual—and powerful
Clean, well-crafted data visualizations can aid in understanding complex patterns and present key information visually, enabling business leaders to make informed decisions quickly and easily. With Coalesce, data teams can build, manage, and iterate on more data projects as efficiently as possible with the help of customizable data patterns that introduce standardization and governance into the data transformation process.
Visually mapping data lineage can aid in regulatory compliance efforts and strengthen trust in data products—a key marker of effective data programs. Visualization also makes data more accessible to less technical users by functioning as an educational tool, bringing a level of granular data visibility to data teams and stakeholders across the enterprise, without needing to read thousands of lines of code.
“Coalesce has a nice graphical user interface that allows users to draw a picture to tell a story,” says Kent Graziano, an author, thought leader, and Coalesce advisor known as The Data Warrior. “Aspects of the platform are very technical, but the diagrams and graphs help people understand and know how this data got there. Coalesce offers a map.”
#3 Coalesce is accessible
Collaborative data architecture is future-proof. Coalesce designed its graphical user interface with a flexible and collective user experience in mind, with icons, buttons, and menus that create pathways for users of all backgrounds. It works similarly to other software your teams are already using.
As less technical users increasingly handle and explore data, it’s vitally important that all data tools are easy to use and intuitive. Coalesce balances highly technical capabilities with carefully designed basic features that all users need, further breaking down silos to create more cohesive pipelines.
“You no longer need an army of expert coders to transform your data to make it useful,” Graziano says. “You can instead train a less technical person who might understand the business better. They know what they need to do with the data, but they don’t have to code. That allows them to be more productive, and frees your more technical engineers to do other high-value work.”
Adds Florian: “Data is the easiest part of the whole thing. It’s the collaboration piece that is what you have to make happen.” With its intuitive design built with collaboration in mind, Coalesce helps teams from all parts of the business leverage the same software to do more meaningful work.
#4: Coalesce makes it easier to introduce enterprise data standards and standardize code
“The bottom line for most enterprises is ‘Will the tool help us deliver value quicker?’” Graziano says. “That is one of the huge benefits of having a code automation platform like this—you can deliver value faster and you can change it faster with a much lower risk.”
Standardized code enables companies to onboard team members more quickly and easily, accelerating experimentation and iteration.
“The data prep and coding and all that is one of the biggest bottlenecks in business,” says Michael Tantrum, National Sales Director at Resultant. “IT people with knowledge of how things work often don’t have time to prepare the data. And we don’t really want them to be doing that anyway—we need those people to come up with data models, KPIs, make decisions about data quality, and oversee lineage. What we don’t need them to do is write code and build databases. It’s better for machinery to do that.”
When companies can consistently generate code that is easy to read and maintain, they reduce complexity and increase efficiency, leading to higher-quality data products.
#5 Coalesce helps businesses stay nimble
Staying ahead requires companies to anticipate challenges and opportunities while adjusting accordingly. Businesses that struggle to use their data tend to be short-sighted and reactive.
“We have to aim to create a business infrastructure that allows us to be adaptable and anticipate the analytic requirements that are going to come up next month, next year, or anywhere down the line,” Tantrum says. “That means you need something nimble, which means automation. And that means Coalesce.”
Traditional data programs can be slow and expensive, preventing continuous improvement. The ability to experiment, iterate quickly, and innovate requires an agile data platform that streamlines workflows. Coalesce offers speed without sacrificing quality or governance, equipping teams to proactively meet challenges.
Get ahead with Coalesce
There is no single way to completely transform a business’s performance. But assessing the tech stack and investing in solutions that support a culture of innovation can have a far-ranging impact.
Coalesce is rooted in data transformation that is budget- and user-friendly to support data-driven work aligned with a company’s vision. We believe that great things can happen when data informs every aspect of a business and every team member is empowered.
The future is collaborative, unified, and agile—and we’re excited to be a part of it.
To learn more about how Coalesce can work for you, request a personalized demo—or try it for free.
