The amount of data in companies is increasing at an unprecedented rate. In order to not lose sight of the big picture, companies use a variety of applications that are supposed to enable efficient data management and effective data analysis. Yet, there is an ever-increasing knowledge gap between experts and users. In this article, you will learn about the most popular tools and how the Lyntics Data Literacy Platform enables their meaningful application.
For companies, questions of data management and data analysis are becoming increasingly important against the background of data-driven business processes. Because whoever uses data sensibly secures a decisive competitive advantage. Data helps all business areas to succeed, from product development, production and delivery to controlling, marketing, human resources and IT. To ensure that data is handled professionally, companies usually make use of a wide range of tools.
But the use of these applications is often accompanied by the question of so-called data literacy or data competence: Are employees able to interpret the data correctly? Can they recognize the structures and logics behind it and put the data into the right context? This is where the Lyntics Data Literacy Platform comes in, making data knowledge and competence directly accessible to companies and thus enabling a meaningful and effective analysis of data.
The most popular data tools at a glance
The range of tools for data management and data analysis is huge. However, they essentially cover these functions:
- Data Extraction (ETL)
- Data Transformation and preparation
- Data Visualization
- Data Systematization and cataloging
- Business Intelligence
- Documentation
- Version control
Business Intelligence Tools
Business Intelligence tools such as Tableau, Qlik or Celonis are analytical information systems and enable companies to integrate, analyze and transform data from various data sources. In addition, BI tools also enable forecasting through data modeling as well as visualization of data correlations in dashboards. For this purpose, the BI software applies different methods such as data mining.
BI Tools vs. Lyntics
Since in BI tools both the preparation and the implementation of the logic are done manually, information about the data structure is needed. Lyntics provides this, among other things, with the Workbench, which serves as a backend solution for many BI tools (e.g. for the Celonis on-premise solution).
Lyntics thus acts as a kind of backend of the BI solutions and enables the exchange of knowledge and the combination between front-end and back-end.
Data Lake/Data Warehouses
A Data Lake is a platform on which raw data is collected and stored centrally. Using SQL, Python or R, this data can be analyzed or further processed. Since no data structure exists and the purpose of the data is not yet defined, the data lake is often compared to a pool. The Google Cloud is a well-known example for this.
The Data Warehouse (e.g. from Cloudera or Snowflake), on the other hand, is a repository for structured, filtered data that has already been processed for a specific purpose. This facilitates further use, but makes maintenance more difficult, since the logic must be implemented manually.
Data Lake/DataWarehouse vs. Lyntics
Unlike in Data Lakes and Warehouses, data is not actually stored in the Lyntics Data Literacy Platform. Instead, only the data structure and logic will be imported from existing Data Warehouses. The Workbench is used to query raw datafrom the Data Lake.
This results in a central advantage of Lyntics: IT security. The data is made visible and accessible, but at the same time it is specially protected.
Data Catalog
A Data Catalog is a meta data directory of databases within an organization. It is used in particular by data experts to structure the management and use of data. Data Catalogs are also helpful in performing business intelligence analysis and are also used for strategic business orientation, product development and product marketing. Well-known providers are for example Informatica, Attacama, and Alation.
Data Catalog vs. Lyntics
There are some similarities between the Lyntics Data Literacy Platform and Data Catalogs, such as the representation of tables from databases. However, they are not completely the same.
Lyntics can exploit data from data catalogs via interfaces, which means that the Data Literacy Platform can be used as a supplement to a Data Catalog. However, it is not a reference work, but aims to provide access to data literacy.
Wiki/Documentation Tools
At first glance, Documentation Tools and Wikis seem to have a large overlap with Lyntics, since they all serve documentation purposes. However, these are different: While Version Control Tools aim at versioning, Documentation Tools help to "explain" the function of the developed software and show, among other things, which data it processes and on which basis it was created.
Wiki/Documentation vs. Lyntics
Wikis and Documentation Tools offer only a part of what Lyntics does as an all-in-one platform.
This is because Lyntics combines documentation, versioning and data expertise, including all previous knowledge and business logic, in just one application.
Version Control Tools
Version Control, also known as source code control, is actually not a tool but a process for tracking and managing changes to a software code. However, there are also special Version Control Tools such as GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket that allow software developers to systematically manage changes to the source code by storing changes in a special database. If developers make mistakes, they can compare their code with previous versions in the system and then make corrections. In this way, Version Control helps to shorten development time and reduce error-related failures.
Version Control vs. Lyntics
Version Control Tools focus on logging changes to a source code and therefore do not have large editing capabilities. Furthermore, they are completely content-independent. This means that any form of code can be managed. The Lyntics Data Literacy Platform, on the other hand, is tailored to Data Science and offers users specific functions in this area. For this purpose, Lyntics analyzes the existing assets and makes the underlying logic accessible to everyone.
Version Control Tools such as GitHub can be combined with Lyntics, for example, to extract logic from previous scripts. Quick and easy synchronization of assets between Version Control Tools and Lyntics is enabled by the interfaces the Data Literacy Platform provides.
Data Literacy Training
Although Data Tools facilitate the handling of data in the company enormously, they do not provide any assistance in the interpretation of the analyses and results. For this, data literacy is needed - the competence to recognize structures, logics and correlations behind complex data. However, not all users of the applications bring this with them.
Training offers can only provide limited relief. This is because the learning process is enormously time-consuming and usually does not end with further training. Last but not least, real data experts often have a relevant degree and many years of professional experience. The Lyntics Data Literacy Platform is a good choice because it gives employees quick access to data knowledge.
Turning data into real business value: Lyntics Data Literacy Platform
Anyone who not only wants to collect and analyze data, but also interpret it in terms of business strategy, will derive real added value from Lyntics. The data literacy platform provides scalable data knowledge in seconds at the push of a button and thus transforms data into tangible business value.