Your path to innovation

4 steps to
data-driven
innovation
Table of contents

Introduction 02

01 Democratize data within your current 03

structures

02 Unlock powerful insights with AI 04

and ML

03 Tap into real-time insights for 05

faster innovation

04 Control costs as you grow 06

Customer story: Quantum Metric 07

How Google Cloud helps you access and use 08

data insights, faster

1
Get intelligent,
AI-powered
insights for a
competitive edge.
Data plays a critical role in business today. From driving
innovation to enhancing the customer experience, it’s
the guiding light for making intelligent business decisions.

But data can be notoriously hard to access, analyze, and

use. Particularly if you’re manually configuring clusters or
bolting-on integrations to run sophisticated analysis. To
solve these issues, leading companies have their sights
set on best-of-breed tools and services, built with today’s
complex data demands in mind.

Here are 4 steps your business can take to embrace the

new possibilities that data creates.

2
1

Democratize data within your

current structures.
To get from data to intelligence and business
value, give your teams access to the right
information at the right time.
As the volume of data within your organization Say goodbye to skills gaps
grows, so too does your opportunity to use it
By harnessing the latest developments in
as a key differentiator and driver of business
artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
success. But only if the right teams can access
(ML), you can enable analysts and data teams to
all this information.
innovate fast – no lengthy training needed.
The democratization of your data is an
important first step on your path to becoming According to IDG, the biggest
an intelligent, insight-driven company. You
barrier to innovating with data is
need to give your teams unfettered access
a lack of IT and developer skills.2
to the data they need, quickly and easily. Yet
many organizations still have work to do – for
example, almost half (47%) of global product Make the complex clear
teams say they don’t have access to the data To truly democratize big data, ensure your data
they need to measure performance.1 is both accessible and easily digestible, with
familiar tools like spreadsheets and dashboards
Break down data barriers to help your employees unlock clear insights.
To give your teams the very best opportunity to Using the latest data analytics services to
innovate at scale, they need real-time insights. provide reusable functions, materialized
Aim to introduce end-to-end data analytics views, and train ML models without any data
to deliver data and insights straight into the movement means non-technical domain experts
workflows your teams already use – be it a and partners can cut through the noise.
communication tool like Slack or a manager’s
weekly email.

1 MixPanel, 2021, Product Metrics That Matter

2 IDG, 2021, No Turning Back: How the Pandemic Has Reshaped Digital Business Agendas

3
2

Unlock powerful
insights with AI and ML.
Go from data to business value faster
with best-of-breed analytics and AI tools
and services.

To turn data into actionable insights, leading
companies embrace AI and ML. These powerful
tools do the hard work of extracting insights at
scale and in a fraction of the time it would take
with legacy processes.
While most organizations know they need these
tools, adoption remains low. A great incentive
to change? Those out in front can make smarter,
faster business decisions.
44% of ‘digital-forward’ companies
currently use data analytics, AI/ML,
and IoT tools – compared to just 24%
of ‘digital-conservative’ companies.3
The latest data analytics and AI tools will help
you keep pace with the leaders. Here are some
key things to consider.
Aim for speed and simplicity
from place to place. Your data scientists and
data analysts should be able to hit the ground
running using simple SQL, without getting
bogged down in complex algorithms.
Enable massive scalability
Consider how much data your organization
deals with today. Now think about how much
there could be tomorrow. To compete, you’ll
need the ability to run rapid analytics on both
structured and unstructured data at near-
infinite scale, without incurring extra storage
or compute costs.
Get the ability to dive deeper
Some data sets will naturally need deeper
analysis. From one AI platform, you should
have the ability to build and execute simple ML
models right through to advanced analytics
– all within minutes.

Aim to stream data directly into your analytics

tools, without the hassle of having to move it

3 Ibid

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3

Tap into real-time insights

for faster innovation.
To make decisions at the speed of business,
you need access to insights on demand.
In today’s hyperspeed, competitive business environment, real-time insights
are worth their weight in gold – helping you make better decisions, create
exceptional customer experiences, and increase agility and velocity.

Once you’ve democratized your data and got your AI/ML tools in place, your
data scientists can start experimenting with real-time data. And when this
happens, your potential for innovation truly takes off.

CIOs expect data and business analytics

to drive the most IT investment in 2021.4

Explore data with less lead time

With the latest analytics tools, you don’t have to worry about the cost of
queries, nor do you have to plan them in advance. You can land data at any time
– without being held back by cost concerns.

Synchronize your systems

To make data immediately available for analysis, set your sights on high-speed
streaming services – plus the ability to synchronize data across heterogeneous
databases, storage systems, and applications. Then, real-time insights are not
only possible, but become a powerful part of your innovation strategy.

4 CIO, 2021, 2021 State of the CIO

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4

Control costs as you grow.

Manage your cloud costs as you pursue
data-driven innovation and growth.

Done well, data analysis delivers significant
business value. Yet if you’re manually
configuring clusters and provisioning more
nodes as data grows, you may find the cost and
complexity quickly become prohibitive.
pay for what you use, and get automatic savings
based on monthly usage or by pre-paying
for resources.
Save in more ways than one

It’s why more organizations are turning to
serverless computing. The inherent elasticity
and scalability of this model is ideal for the
unpredictable workloads associated with all that
data crunching.
Only pay for what you use
Optimize spend with actionable, AI-powered
recommendations. Ideally, you should only ever
Serverless AI/ML platforms can automatically
scale to thousands of cores in seconds,
letting you run analytics without constraint.
And you don’t have to worry about system
provisioning, maintenance, fault tolerance,
or performance tuning.

6
Quantum Metric recovers
lost revenue with digital
experience analytics
Tech company Quantum Metric works with major retailers to help them find
and fix flaws with their online shopping experiences. It’s using Google Cloud
and Google BigQuery for high-performance, highly scalable, and secure data
processing and analysis.

Results
• 15% average increase in customers’ e-commerce sales
• 50% business growth
• 3x faster to close deals
• Met enterprise security requirements such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001

Google BigQuery unlocked such vast power and

scale that we realized we were limiting ourselves
previously using a relational database. Google
BigQuery differentiates our analytics products from the
competition, because no matter what questions we ask
or how much data we put in, we get results in seconds.”

—Mario Ciabarra, Founder & CEO, Quantum Metric

Read full story

7
How Google Cloud helps you
access and use data insights, faster.
More than 90% of Forbes’ top 20 digital companies are using Google Cloud.
With Google Cloud’s industry-leading
services and expert support, we can help
you democratize your data, unlock new
insights, innovate faster, and reduce your
IT overhead.
Get insights faster with real-time analytics
Innovate quickly with BigQuery, thanks to on-demand
insights, zero operational overhead, and embedded ML.
Accelerate experimentation and innovation
with AI/ML
Use AutoML and BigQuery ML to innovate faster and
create magical user experiences, even without AI
expertise. Or use Vertex AI to train models with nearly
80% fewer lines of code than other platforms.
Extract more value from your data
Use Looker to access the truest, most up-to-date version
of your company’s data, across any cloud.
Upskill your teams to innovate faster
Get the most from your implementations by tapping into
online training, support resources, technical mentorship,
and workshops.
Migrating from Redshift to BigQuery has
been game-changing for our organization.
We’ve been able to overcome performance
bottlenecks and capacity constraints as
well as fearlessly unlock actionable insights
for our business.”
—Spencer Aiello, Tech Lead and Manager,
ML at Discord
Read full story
Google BigQuery has been one of the
biggest assets in Geotab’s Data & Analytics
portfolio. Through rapid iteration on data-
centric analytic and AI models across
petabytes of data arising from 2.3 million
connected vehicles, Google BigQuery has
allowed our data scientists and engineers
to accelerate time-to-market of our
products and solutions.”
—Mike Branch, VP Data & Analytics, Geotab
Ready to take your next steps?
To find out more about how Google Cloud
can help you turn data into intelligent
insights, faster, just get in touch.
Talk to an expert
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