By Anthony Zumpano
Published on November 21, 2023
The future is bright â and will be powered by data.
That was the theme at this yearâs revAlation, the conference series that explores whatâs next in data intelligence â from generative AI and data governance to self-serve analytics and cloud transformation.
Hereâs a recap of this yearâs events, which spanned the globe from London to Chicago to Sydney.
The first revAlation stop in London introduced ALLIE AI, which builds on Alationâs machine learning (ML) capabilities to deliver intelligent curation and search to extract value from their data faster. ALLIE AI is âa big game changer as far as data catalog curation is concerned within organizations,â said Mohit Sirpal, a data governance specialist from Interac, a Toronto-based financial services firm. âAuto-curation, semantic search, auto-titling, and auto-descriptions will surely enable organizations to save time and scale data initiatives more quickly, democratize trusted data, and advance new AI initiatives.â
David Reed, Chief Knowledge Officer and Data Evangelist at DataIQ, moderated âThe Power of Data: Perspectives from Visionary Minds,â a panel consisting of Alation customers Sanjeevan Bala from ITV, Loretta Franks from Kellanova, and Steve Pimblett from The Very Group. Franks discussed the challenge of balancing AI-based innovation with evolving regulations and compliance, describing her organizatonâs initiative called SPEED (Security, Privacy and Ethics across Enterprise Data). âWe want to make sure the business doesn't feel like governance and compliance is anchored to pace,â she said, âbut at the same time, strengthening the fact that we are here to enable it so that, as you deploy these tools, you're confident theyâre built in a compliant way.â
Pimblett shared the âtop-down, bottom-up approachâ to leveraging AI to accommodate the changes in consumer retail behavior, which categorizes the âactionâ of AI into âproductivity of our staff, brand-new propositions for the customer, and better decisions at scale.â
ITV became an Alation customer earlier this year, and Bala marveled at our âincredibleâ engagement, which included involving both the data governance teams and the business units, which fostered enterprise-wide adoption.
At an Active Data Governance breakout session, Vattenfall data governance lead Sebastian Kaus compared data governance to a long shopping experience. Sometimes when you wade through a large retail store, you find yourself buying more than you expected. These stores often have food courts to help people recharge and boost their spirits before they depart.
Data leaders would do well to borrow this lesson, Kaus advised, to make sure your data governance plan includes awards and recognition for the people involved in the heavy lifting required.
The closing keynote from Jon EklĂśf, CDO of GKN Aerospace, analyzed what makes data programs successful â the people who run them. EklĂśf declared that people need to feel safe to deliver their best. By seeing the leadership buy-in and success of an organizationâs existing programs, theyâre more confident to take the lead on future data programs.
In addition, the following organizations were honored with Data Radicals Awards for leading the charge in driving data culture:
Sainsburyâs received the Data Radical Award for industry excellence, which was accepted by Jade Jones, the companyâs metadata and data quality manager.
GKN Aerospace received the Governance Groundbreaker Award for exceptional work in data governance; the award was accepted by the organizationâs global graduate engineer, Rasmus Arvidson.
Vattenfall won the Culture Creator Award for their commitment to fostering a robust data culture that emphasizes the importance of connecting people with data; the award was accepted by Kaus.
The Windy City welcomed attendees to a two-day event that began with pre-conference training in active data governance. The first official day kicked off with the keynote âTransform Your Business with Data-Driven Strategies,â delivered by Katie Bogenschutz, VP of Enterprise Data Management, Kroger/84.51.Â
Bogenschutz described the importance of data both internally and externally. âWe take customer data to make a more personalized and valuable experience for customers in our store,â she said. âTechnology was previously in the background, but now we partner with the business to have a seat at the table and drive change.â She described a unified data strategy that aligns data producers with data consumers.
This alignment extended to customers in the product keynote âChart the Future of Your Data Intelligence Journey: Alation Platform Vision and Roadmap.â Alation CTO Junaid Saiyed and Prabhath Nanisetty, Head of Industry, Retail Data & Technology, Snowflake, lauded the importance of meeting customers where they are and emphasized a customer-centric approach to ensure their needs and preferences are addressed. This approach is strengthened by the partnership between Alation and Snowflake, which serves more than 250 joint customers.
Cleo Haynal, Senior Director, GTM Strategy and Operations, Alation, and Beth Senay, Director, Data Trust & Enablement, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) led the business breakout âHow to Assess Your Organization's Data Maturity.â Beth described how the Alation Data Culture Maturity Model, which assesses data leadership, data search & discovery, data literacy, and data governance, âhelps you break down silos in your organization.âÂ
Haynal assured attendees to not be overwhelmed if they uncover deficiencies in their maturity pillars. âAs youâre learning English, you donât jump directly to Shakespeare,â she said. âWith data literacy, you donât throw Shakespearean data at your organizations to start.â She stressed building your organizationâs data literacy first.
CHOP was also honored with a Data Radicals Award âfor being a trailblazer thatâs transforming the data landscape.â Alation CEO Satyen Sangani presented the award to Beth and Shakeeb Akhter, CHCIO, CDH-E, CHOPâs Chief Digital and Information Officer. "I cannot speak highly enough about the Alation team and our partnerships to build a product together," Shakeeb said.
One veteran of several industry events declared that revAlation in Sydney was âdefinitely the best event this year,â appreciating the focus on business users, not just technical sessions. One example of this was our product keynote, âChart the Future of Your Data Intelligence Journey,â where Alationâs Solutions Engineering Manager Murali Krishnamurthy and Director of Professional Services Leandra Siedor revealed our platform vision and roadmap. The keynote highlighted investments in integrations with collaboration tools, the launch of ALLIE AI, and expanded lineage capabilities.Â
A product demo showcased the power that Alation can bring to an entire organization. The demoâs narrative considered a business concern raised by the CEO of âIpsoFacto Insurance.â A quarterly profitability analysis revealed the company is falling behind its competition, and the CEO has tasked each region to reassess premium calculations quarterly. To meet this challenge, each region of IpsoFacto Insurance needs to route the right data to the right people.Â
Using Alation, each region can tap into the strength of ALLIE AI to autocurate their regionâs data descriptions, understand data quality scores through Alationâs integration with our partnered data quality tools, and view lineage to assess the business impact of a data quality issue. Business users can search for all of this in Microsoft Teams, minimizing their context switching and thus, improving their efficiency.
Siedor also led a breakout session that discussed quantifying the business value â and the net quantifiable benefits â derived from mature use of the Alation data intelligence platform. Examples of benefits our customers shared included operational efficiency, better business decisions, improved customer outcomes, shortened innovation cycles, and regulatory compliance. Customers learned that business value can be discerned by developing metrics and measuring those metrics using data from Alation Analytics, the telemetry database of Alation. Siedor also provided some example value metrics for attendees to start using today, plus the queries to measure these metrics.
As a data management & governance specialist at an Australian transport energy distributor and retailer noted, âAlation helps teams go from searching for data like holding a hand torch in a cave, to having a spotlight.âÂ
At the climax of the event, Aware Super, the third-largest superannuation fund in Australia, was honored with the Data Radicals Award for transforming their data landscape with Alation. The initiative empowered every individual at the organization with data-driven insights, enabling them to address and overcome various business challenges.
âWeâre thrilled to win the Alation Data Radicals Award, which recognises the exceptional data governance and data management capabilities that we have implemented at Aware Super, helping us to harness data in a multitude of ways to provide better outcomes for our members,â said Chad Barendse, Data Governance Manager at Aware Super, who accepted the award.
This yearâs revAlation series, which took place on three continents, is testament to the impact of data culture at organizations big and small throughout the world. Want to learn more? Experience the series for yourself, with access to keynote videos, slides, photos, and more!Â
Whether itâs generative AI, data governance, self-serve analytics, or cloud transformation, Alationâs enterprise data intelligence solutions improve data-driven decision-making at more than 500 companies across the globe.
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