How Sisense and Periscope Data Are Helping Data Builders Grow in New Directions

Guest post by Erin Winkler-McCue, Lead, Platform Partnerships & Strategic Projects @Sisense

Answering questions with data is no longer just the responsibility of a small team of data professionals. It’s become a shared responsibility between multiple departments—and that’s true for companies of all sizes in every industry from every part of the globe. As a result of the data revolution, every job has become a data job, every team a data team, and every company a data company.

As data continues to gain momentum, every company has embarked on its own journey with data analytics. Different organizations collect and analyze different types of data to answer their own unique questions and no two are alike. Over time, as these companies have increased their analytics capabilities, they are making decisions that shape how they create value from all that business data.

A short overview of data maturity

Generally speaking, as our team surveys the landscape after the recent data explosion, we’ve seen two pretty distinct paths for teams to grow their data operations. Once a baseline is set where data from disparate sources is combined into a single source of truth, companies are choosing to prioritize either deeper data analysis or wider access to insights.

Some companies have gotten a taste of the value provided by central or hybrid data teams and are eager to bring in more data science resources. These teams are looking into ways to use the most cutting-edge data techniques to answer questions that no one even knew could be asked until the last few years.

For other organizations, the value of analysis is in translating data into actions for individual lines of business. Operationalizing data-driven insights to stakeholders, customers, and the world at large is an important part of this process, but it’s also crucial to give those audiences the power to access datasets and dive into the information about their work.

These two approaches aren’t opposed. They’re complementary, as far as the value they provide to a business. It’s important to understand that expansion in either width or depth is still positive growth and neither direction is objectively superior. Ultimately the choice about which direction to mature goes a long way toward determining which questions a business can answer with data and who will benefit from those answers once they are found.

Sisense + Periscope Data: merged to accelerate

Until recently, it’s been incredibly difficult to advance business data analysis in both directions at once. The teams at both Sisense and Periscope Data heard this feedback in communications with customers. Our customers told us that it takes a full-time data team and a hodgepodge of solutions crafted into a workflow to do just one right; moving forward on both fronts would drastically increase the amount of resources needed and it’s not realistic to take on that project.

It’s in the Sisense DNA to be customer-focused. Our company’s leaders were eager to grow their data operations wider and deeper. It’s well acknowledged that stacking more gizmos into an already-full grab bag of point solutions is not a sustainable way to achieve that growth. With our recent merger, we wanted to build something for customers that allowed them to manage that bidirectional evolution all in one place.

Historically, Sisense offered a BI tool that was perfect for enabling business users to upload their own data to analyze via a friendly drag-and-drop interface. Periscope Data was a tool recognized as extremely powerful for advanced analysis, with support for SQL, Python, and R all in the same environment. After a little consideration, both leadership teams concluded that merging the two products together was a natural step in building the tool that data-hungry teams at both customer bases were craving.

Unifying data builders of all types

No matter how mature a company is with their analytics, we’ve entered an age where data is the primary input for every project on every team. Builders of all data abilities are using their business data to shape the future for their company.

With Sisense + Periscope Data, businesses will receive a single end-to-end analytics platform, capable of benefiting every builder. The data scientists and engineers instantly gain complete control over more sophisticated analysis projects. They can use powerful querying languages that are in their toolkit and translate those insights on to citizen data scientists via actionable AI-powered apps.

With the combined product, every builder is using the tools that they are uniquely suited to wield and creating new things with data that will give them a serious competitive edge over their competition. This merged platform brings together the best technology for every use case and makes it easier than ever to democratize insights mined from complex data.

This full-spectrum platform was a part of the pre-merger roadmap for both companies, so joining forces accelerates how quickly that dream turns into reality. We’re thrilled to see what our customers can create with a powerful analysis and a true collaboration-focused tool. We keep a very close eye on how the builders at Sisense and Periscope Data create value out of their data, and we just gave them a vastly upgraded toolkit! With the power to grow their data capabilities wider and deeper at the same time, the landscape for builders is wide open and ready to be conquered.