Blog

  • Impactful Datasets – Part II
    by Data Quality Consultants
    The reality in the corporate world is that executives are responsible for seeing into the future. This assertion comes with no implicit mysticism. If the C-suite predicts the future correctly, shareholders, employees, and customers will generally all be positively impacted. A great example of this is Apple’s 2007 partnership with AT&T to launch the iPhone. Apple now enjoys a multi-trillion-dollar market cap, up from roughly $150B in 2007. If different choices were made by leadership along the way, the story would be wildly different. As we move into the anticipated era of Generative AI, data will be increasingly relied upon… Read more: Impactful Datasets – Part II
  • Impactful Datasets – Part I
    by Data Quality Consultants
    The topic of impactful datasets can generate many different opinions, especially concerning the definition of ‘impactful’. I consider an impactful dataset to be one that does one or more of the following: 1.) Saves significant amounts of time2.) Significantly increases revenue or reduces expenses3.) Facilitates improved executive decision making Let’s start by unpacking the time saving element. Far too many organizations have teams that spend hours upon hours manually updating spreadsheets. Usually this is due to the low barrier of entry – almost anyone can get started with Google Sheets or Excel. The problem is that these are tools meant… Read more: Impactful Datasets – Part I
  • The Definition of Data
    by Data Quality Consultants
    What is data? This seems like a simplistic question until you really sit down to think about it. Is writing the number two on a piece of paper considered data? What about the exploding message that contains Inspector Gadget’s newest mission? Admittedly, these are a lot of questions, but that is the nature of data. Data often leads to more questions despite getting more answers. To me, data is defined as, “The attempt to describe reality in a format that is designed to be accessed more than once.” So, to revisit our initial questions: Is writing the number two on… Read more: The Definition of Data
  • Thoughts on AI – v0
    by Data Quality Consultants
    The elephant in the room is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Is it just media hype or will AI actually change the world in ways it’s difficult to fully grasp? I won’t pretend to know for sure, but I’ve definitely got an opinion to share. First, the hype train is real but there is substance to this current iteration of what we know as AI. AI can write content, AI can generate photos, AI can produce videos, and yes – AI can write code. But will this all be enough to replace humans with robots? I think not. What’s happening now is… Read more: Thoughts on AI – v0
  • Tools vs. Fundamentals
    by Data Quality Consultants
    There’s constant chatter amongst data professionals about what tools to use to get the job done. I could spend all day rattling them off: Snowflake, Spark, Databricks, Big Query, Kafka, dbt, SQLMesh, and the list goes on and on… But here’s the real question – When’s the last time you heard a discussion about getting back to the basics? Personally, I think the fundamentals are what separates average performers and “10x” Data Engineers. It’s not generally the tooling that makes the big difference. I’ve seen more business problems solved with a relational database and SQL queries than the latest and… Read more: Tools vs. Fundamentals