New One Data Feature:Business Case Builder
By Aleksandra Ershova
Senior Product Manager at One Data
When working with data products, it’s critical to make the development process as fast and efficient as possible. At One Data, we’ve recognized the common challenges organizations face in aligning business goals with technical execution. To address these challenges, we’ve developed the Business Case Builder (or as we call it, “BCB”). It’s a tool designed to streamline the creation, management, and monitoring of data products.
What's the Business Case Builder?
The Business Case Builder is a module within One Data. It enables teams to streamline the design, development, documentation, and monitoring of data products.
BCB provides a centralized platform for business and technical teams to collaborate. This helps ensuring data products are aligned with business objectives from the outset.
Think of it as a collaborative and interactive canvas for your data products!
Why we built this feature
Through our work with customers across different industries, we have identified a persistent issue. Business stakeholders and technical teams often operate in silos, which can lead to misaligned objectives and project delays. We developed the Business Case Builder to address this issue by providing a unified platform where teams can plan and execute projects together.
With that, you link technical solutions directly to business outcomes.
Benefits of the Business Case Builder
The Business Case Builder provides a number of advantages that can streamline the development of your data products.
- Enhance collaboration: By centralizing planning and execution, the BCB ensures that business and technical teams are aligned. You reduce miscommunication and speed up project timelines.
- Streamline documentation and monitoring: The BCB simplifies documentation and provides real-time access to critical project information. You reduce the need for manual updates and minimize the risk of errors.
- Data-driven decision-making CThe BCB enables better prioritization of tasks and clearer insights into project value, improving transparency and supporting more informed decision-making with stakeholders. You speed up the decision-making process.
Let’s dig into a small use case together to learn more.
Example use case: optimizing credit lifecycle
To provide a more practical understanding of the Business Case Builder, let us consider the example of a national bank aiming to optimize its credit lifecycle process. The bank is facing challenges with data that is spread across multiple systems. This hinders employees from accessing the information they need.
Their objective is to harmonize the data in order to improve the rate at which credit applications transition into loan agreements. To achieve this goal, the bank’s revenue analyst, Jerry, and data engineer, Jenny, will utilize the Business Case Builder to spearhead the initiative.
Create and design the business case
The revenue analyst and data engineer will begin by creating a new business case within the BCB. For this example, let’s name the business case “Credit Lifecycle Optimization.”
The BCB interface offers a central canvas for planning the project’s data flow. It provides panels for entering key details such as descriptions, values, and ownership. An asset library enables the addition of existing data assets or the creation of placeholders for assets that are still in development.
Plan the data flow
The objective of Jerry and Jenny is to create a “Credit Lifecycle Report” that will provide actionable insights for the bank’s management. They begin by adding a placeholder for the report and detailing the anticipated outcomes and source systems.
Next, they identify the necessary data, beginning with credit application data. They identify an existing data product in the asset library. They verify its relevance through the BCB’s metadata panel. And then add it to the canvas.
As they proceed, they incorporate client data, which the BCB automatically associates with the credit application data, reflecting preexisting connections between these assets.
Explore data lineage and add new data products
To fully understand the data involved, Jenny and Jerry explore the upstream and downstream assets related to the credit application data. The BCB reveals that this data originates from sources such as Oracle, AWS S3, and MongoDB—confirming its relevance to their project.
In addition to using existing data products, Jenny and Jerry plan to create a new data product called “Loans.” They add a placeholder for this product and specify the required input data, such as loan types, terms, and contracts. They then initiate a data product request directly from the BCB, integrating this new asset into their project plan.
Monitor progress and ensure alignment
With the business case fully planned, Jenny begins developing the missing data products. Jerry monitors progress in real time. The BCB provides comprehensive updates on project status, data quality, and asset involvement. It ensures all team members remain aligned and informed throughout the process.
Conclusion
The Business Case Builder is an effective solution for organizations aiming to optimize data product development. By fostering collaboration, streamlining processes, and offering real-time insights, the BCB enables your team to deliver data products that align with business needs in a more efficient manner.
Author:
Aleksandra ErshovaSenior Product Manager, One Data
Aleksandra Ershova took on the role of a Product Manager at One Data five years ago. Here, she is focused on building data products. This shift allowed her to revisit the challenges she had encountered in the past as a business analyst from a new perspective. She is putting an emphasis on making data product development more efficient and less time-consuming—mainly by developing new AI features for One Data with her team.