Structured and unstructured data, legacy versus modern databases, cloud versus on-site storage… Is the technical jargon around modern data architecture obscuring the way forward? Modern data architecture does not have to be a technical minefield. With the right guide, the data journey becomes clear, no matter which stage your organisation is starting from.

Data and Analytics maturity typically progresses through three main stages: Descriptive, Predictive, and Prescriptive. Each stage offers more insight, control, and automation. At a minimum, a Modern Data Architecture provides visualisation and reporting to help you understand your business; at its most advanced, it offers automated systems that identify the next best action to achieve your objectives, putting you ahead of your competition.

DESCRIPTIVE

Your business may consist of various units, each using their own data sources and scripting languages. Combining data from different systems becomes time-consuming and, without a unified data model, it is nearly impossible to gain an overview of the business for real-time strategic decisions. To reach a point where your data reflects the true state of your business, you need to ingest, process, and store data in a way that enables reporting and visualisation.

TrueNorth Group’s team builds data pipelines to move information from all your sources—transactions, customer portals, social media, weather, traffic, inventory, logistics, and more—regardless of scripting language, into a central data warehouse. From this environment, you can extract value from your data, creating visualisations and reports that support informed strategic decisions.

Parallel to pipeline development, data storage must be agile and cost-effective enough to cope not only with current requirements but also with the exponential future growth in data ingestion. This could mean adopting a cloud-based warehouse or data lake that can grow with your business without heavy upfront costs, or combining on-premises storage with cloud services to meet all requirements. TrueNorth Group has extensive experience advising on storage strategies aligned with organisational needs and budgets, and the tools to migrate data from on-premises to cloud with minimal disruption.

By the end of this first stage, your company will be processing far larger quantities of data, faster and more efficiently. With TrueNorth Group’s Power BI developers, you benefit from best-in-class dashboards and reports that guide decision-making across the business.

PREDICTIVE

Once your data is consolidated and accessible, you can progress to analysing past behaviours to predict future outcomes using advanced analytics. This stage moves beyond recognising how your business has performed, and into understanding why patterns exist and how they may evolve.

TrueNorth Group’s Data Analysts specialise in examining, weighing, and measuring data to ensure the most relevant and statistically significant information is used to uncover insights. Access to large volumes of data is only valuable if you can distinguish between “fool’s gold” and “real gold,” and this is where expert analysis is essential.

The possibilities of predictive analytics become increasingly exciting as you begin to grasp its potential across different business functions. For example, consider the manager of a brick-and-mortar store responsible for ordering inventory. Previously, with limited insights, he would order the same quantities each week—leading to cycles of overstocking (requiring price cuts) and understocking (leading to unhappy customers). Through predictive analytics, fluctuations in demand become clearer, enabling informed inventory decisions and increased profitability.

TrueNorth Group’s team of data scientists takes this a step further by building models that automate predictive processes. Using Machine Learning and AI techniques, these models continuously improve over time, becoming more accurate with each iteration. With years of experience, TrueNorth Group’s data scientists understand how to select meaningful data points and build reliable models that forecast trends and shifts influenced by factors such as seasonality, macro-economics, customer demand, and even global pandemics.

At this stage, your data is helping you understand and predict the future state of both your business and the environment in which it operates. As Forbes Magazine notes, while instinct and experience remain valuable, research confirms that organisations that base decisions on data—not intuition—are 19 times more likely to be profitable.

PRESCRIPTIVE

This brings us to the final stage of the Modern Data Architecture evolution: a stage where your data not only predicts outcomes but also helps you determine the next best course of action to achieve your objectives and goals.