Data Warehousing
- Category: Data
We Have 20+ Years Experience In Data Warehousing
Metamor Systems founders and staff have worked in the data warehousing field for 20 years. We’ve heard endless debates on the “right way” to create a data warehouse and have seen technologies evolve over the years. Through it all, we keep one thing first and foremost in our minds: We must maintain the integrity of all this data to support the business.
In the past, a data warehouse meant millions of dollars and a very long timeline. Fast forward, technologies evolved and began to disrupt the “traditional data warehouse” market. Also the rise of API’s over the years have made data more easily accessible to software services rather than just ETL tools. This has led to an explosion of new opportunities for organizations to finally organize their data at reasonable cost. The new problem is sifting through all the hype and industry lingo to find the right set of technologies to unlock your data’s power. This is what’s meant by the new industry term: right fit engineering. Metamor Systems can lead the way to find the right solution for your organization without breaking the budget.
In the past, the idea was a Data Warehouse would hold a wider scope of data and Data Marts would be created from the data warehouse based on a dimensional model of a certain area of your business (like Marketing or Supply Chain). What many business found is that this took alot of time and effort. However, these can still make alot of sense if your organization has many standard reports that should stay fairly stable over time.
If you’re in a business that changes rapidly or is in the process of being disrupted by new entrants to the market, you may want to quickly create a Data Lake to have a central place to explore all your data. Simply put, a Data Lake is a central area that is largely unstructured but where many different data sets can be integrated. The advantage is that it is quick and easy to identify relationships that may take many months to uncover with a Data Warehouse.
When it comes to a true data warehouse, relational databases are still the go-to technology. However, the marketplace has also become complicated in recent years. Cloud-native databases like Amazon Redshift or Snowflake have become popular as cloud migrations have made it easier and cheaper to maintain a data warehouse. However, the stalwarts are still popular including Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server or even PostGreSQL. Which is right for your organization depends on a lot of factors. Contact us for an evaluation of what's right for you.
Data Management
- Category: Data
Improve Your Business Through Good Data Management
All companies that are competitive in their industries leverage their data to drive business decisions. The challenge is that different data is found in many different areas of the company and often have data quality issues or similar data across the company that can't easily be compared.
Let Metamor Systems find, analyze and tame all your data sources. We'll standarize and harmonize your different data to make sense of it in business contexts.
Unless a system is creating the data, humans almost always insert problems into any data set. Most of the time, this is unintentional and is often just a human error (e.g., transcription or transposition error) or someone entering different data that what is expected (e.g., entering “NA” for race when someone declines to provide it). From the beginning of any Metamor Systems project, we review the data for data issues (i.e., Data Discovery) and then identify validations or data transformations to handle cases of “bad data”. Understanding how clean (or not) your data is and implementing processes to handle it appropriately will ensure that your analytics and reports have meaning.
Closely related to data discovery and data cleasning, data validation is a key part of mananging the overall data environment. Metamor Systems regularly add data validation processes to ETL jobs to ensure data integrity or to identify bad data. While IT professionals cannot second-guess user enteries, a process can be added to raise suspect data to be reviewed. In the past, our staff have created processes to enable staff to review new data entries and determine if they should be allowed to be stored or affect "down-stream" processes. This is key to an organization's data management strategy because data issues coming from other systems can create expensive problems when trying to deal with them on the analytics side. The key is to identify suspect data as early as possible.
Something as simple as "customer" or "product" may mean very different things in different departments. Metamor Systems is adept at bringing key players to the table to create a version of the data (e.g., definitions or standards) that will make sense to business units and won't cause conflicts. Metamor Systems can help set up Data Stewards to take owership of the data for the long-term. This will move your organization to be "Data First".
Analytics
- Category: Reporting, Analytics, Business Intelligence
Drive Your Business Through Objective Analytics
In addition to working with the backend - database - side of organizations, Metamor Systems has many years of experience in designing, implementing and operating large analytics systems. Over the years, our consultants played key roles in implementing and developing reports and dashboards using IBM Cognos, SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, PowerBI and Tableau. Let Metamor Systems jumpstart a new analytics effort in your business.
With the proliferation of new technologies and cloud services, there's more options than before. Generally that's a good thing. However, some of the tools are better at some functions than others.
Some tools are better for data exploration when your analyst are trying to uncover new relationships. Others are good for traditional "rows and columns" reports that need to be standardized. Still others are better for data visualizations and dashboards.
This creates alot of noise that might require hours of research and evaluation. Let Metamor Systems cut through that noise and guide you to identify the tools that are custom tailored for your situation.
Metamor Systems bring the experience and the knowledge to create an overall strategy for your business using your own data to drive business outcomes. From working with you data, we are able to deeply understand what really affects your business. Using "the truth of your data", we can analyze your business model to identify what's really driving your success (or challenges). Understanding your business from its data then sets up business-focused recommendations for tools, key performance indicators and other analytics that will support a better version of your business.
Internet of Things
- Category: IOT
IOT Is Powerful When Done Right
In the last few years, nothing has captured the imagination of more people than the Internet of Things. The possibilities are endless and the idea of connecting the physical world with the cyber world is captivating. Indeed, many can intuitively see the possibilities of ambient intelligence to reduce costs, increase productivity and even increase our security.
In a simple and very common example for the home, just about anyone can now make sure that their doors are locked at a certain time at night...that appliances are turned off when they leave the house...and that they can see who walks up to their door in real-time when they aren’t at home. These are simple to set-up but incredibly powerful. They even give us extra peace of mind. That is, when everything is set up correctly, working well and the system is secure.
Along with our partners, we can use your Azure or AWS environment (along with recommended tools) to build scalable, secure and production-grade solutions. Additionally, your subject matter experts will know the specific business rules to implement to turn data into action; but, you may want extra help setting up the monitoring or analytics. Once set-up and running well, we can then work on creating machine-learning and AI-based processes to predict or anticipate what is needed based on your devices’ contextual awareness of their environment AND your historical data. Contact us to discuss where we can be most helpful in your IOT implementation.
Data Conversions
- Category: Modernizing
We Are The Go-To Firm For Data Conversions
Many times, organizations put off a needed upgrade due to their data. Either they are intimidated by the volume, complexity or known data issues. Metamor Systems will do the heavy lifting and make it efficient and economical so your data doesn't stand in your way of a new system.
When migrating to a new platform or system, you will often be required to make historical data available to the vendor or be told that the vendor does not deal with loading old data. This can be frustrating and problematic because the data history is just as valuable as data flowing into the new system. Often times a neutral vendor, like Metamor Systems, is the best approach. Not only do we bring technical knowledge of multiple database systems, we also are experienced in transforming data from one platform to another while being careful to not lose the meaning in the process.
Without a large investment in expensive software licenses or a new tool, Metamor Systems can use existing database tools to effectively and efficiently convert data and move it to the target system. Add to that, we can also address any historical data issues because we're not locked into to any particular toolset. This takes the complexity away from discussions and focuses the effort on what you need rather than what a software vendor wants to do within its scope of work. In past engagements, we have converted entire systems from one database platform to another and from one architecture to another using the built-in scripting languages. The result is a much more affordable and quicker solution.
Application Development
- Category: Application Development
Modernize Your Applications
We develop web applications in a variety of languages and platforms. This enables us to focus on how to best solve your business challenges without trying to fit your needs into a pre-determined language, platform or framework. As with everything we do, we approach applications holisitically and review key items like integration points, needed interfaces, data conversion and operational support before deciding on technologies or architectures.
Not only have Metamor Systems staff executed many enhancements to the current child welfare case management system used by the State of Indiana, we have developed a huge amount of subject matter experitise about this system, child welfare issues, case management, and federal requirements. Metamor Systems were key staff when the child welfare system was migrated to a new platform and architecture and performed the data conversions. Additionally, Metamor Systems built custom interfaces to support federal reporting to support key funding initiatives.
Additionally, our consultants use state-of-the-art Adobe products to streamline your workflow in the application and to create, manage, publish, and update complex digital forms while integrating with back-end processes, business rules, and data. Ensuring that official state forms were appropriately converted within the child welfare system, Metamor Systems used the Adobe products that enabled the official state forms to be created in the application and integrated while still maintaining the PDF standardization. Using this tool is cost effective as it enables quick and easy updates without maintaining a huge codebase.