Data strategy and governance
Home Builder Leverages Data Strategy and Governance to Transform Data Ecosystem
This leading home builder faced challenges from a decentralized data structure, which left them with inconsistent data and siloed data systems. They needed to modernize their complete data ecosystem to enable critical data, analytics, and AI use cases. Their goals included technical objectives like standardizing data definitions and business-oriented needs like forecasting inventory and predicting supplier performance. The company sought Wavicle’s assistance to develop an end-to-end data strategy that would enable the home builder to modernize its data ecosystem and design a centralized and efficient future state.
Challenges in the data landscape
This leading home builder wanted to embark on a digital transformation journey to modernize its systems.
Historically, their enterprise data team has collaborated with the company’s many business units, allowing them the flexibility to pursue initiatives without stringent centralization. While this approach fueled growth and profits for the individual business units, it led to difficulties streamlining data and evaluating performance holistically. Varied tools and definitions for common products and services across the business units created a tangled web of inconsistent data and made it difficult to obtain consistent answers when calculating profit from a single home or implementing sustainability improvements in manufacturing.
This led to a substantial backlog of data, analytics, and AI initiatives that the company wanted to explore but could not address with a disjointed data ecosystem. There are critical needs, ranging from technical tasks like standardizing data definitions to business goals like forecasting inventory. In addition, their existing systems needed help to support the reporting processes across their many business lines.
The home builder partnered with Wavicle to address the obstacles presented by siloed data and technical infrastructure, which had hindered cross-departmental efforts. Wavicle collaborated with the home builder for a comprehensive project centered around data strategy and governance. This initiative aimed to establish a resilient framework for streamlined and modernized data management throughout the organization and build the foundation for cutting-edge analytics use cases that will help the company thrive in years to come.
Revitalizing data management with strategic solutions
In alignment with the objectives, Wavicle formulated a strategic approach to fulfill the home builder’s data goals. This involved conducting a thorough assessment of their current state and governance needs, followed by developing a detailed roadmap to guide them on their modernization journey.
Current state assessment phase
Before offering recommendations, Wavicle comprehensively assessed the home builder’s existing data architecture. This involved a three-part evaluation, including 23 interviews spanning eight departments, that revealed 119 pain points and 55 desired data and analytics use cases.
Additionally, Wavicle conducted data maturity and governance surveys, providing quantitative insights to map the home builder’s current state. This holistic approach ensured a thorough understanding of their existing landscape, facilitating strategic and informed recommendations and setting a solid foundation for subsequent solution development.
Solution phase
The solution phase comprises five key deliverables, including strategic recommendations and a detailed roadmap for the home builder’s journey towards a modern data ecosystem. Each deliverable is intricately designed to offer actionable insights and ensure a seamless transition.
Deliverable 1 – Use case prioritization
During the assessment phase, Wavicle’s consultants uncovered 55 high-priority use cases for how the builder’s team wanted to manage and use their data. In addressing use case priorities, all the identified use cases were systematically listed, mapped to specific capabilities, and tied to the relevant internal departments.
To further refine prioritization, each use case was linked to one of the home builder’s six strategic visions, which range from housing affordability and rapid construction to sustainability. Collaborating with stakeholders, a collective effort prioritized 18 of the 55 gathered use cases, streamlining focus for more effective short- and long-term planning.
Deliverable 2 – Future state architecture and roadmap
Wavicle crafted the future state architecture for the home builder’s data ecosystem in alignment with the prioritized use cases and strategic vision. This included addressing specific needs identified during the assessment phase. The future state architecture provided a comprehensive vision, outlining the desired technological and structural changes. Subsequently, Wavicle’s data strategy consultants developed a roadmap detailing the steps and milestones required to transition from the current state to the envisioned future architecture.
Deliverable 3 – Governance playbook
Wavicle’s data governance team developed a playbook to improve data governance and quality. The governance assessment measured the home builder’s governance maturity level at 2.5, on a scale from zero to give. Wavicle recommended advancing to 4.5 to meet the company’s goals, providing a playbook and proposing an aggressive one-year roadmap to improve the home builder’s governance program quickly.
The playbook summarized target states and presented a governance model implementation process. This included defining data and processes, gaining consensus, and managing these elements, along with recommended roles and responsibilities. This approach aims for a rapid elevation in maturity, aligning with the home builder’s urgency and commitment to reaching their desired governance level.
Deliverable 4 – Operating model
The operating model outlines how the home builder will sustain the proposed architecture. To best fit the company’s most critical priorities, Wavicle’s data experts devised an operating model that organizes data services into three distinct categories: data engineering as a service, data analytics as a service, and data visualization.
This segmentation allows for specialized resources within each team, facilitating quicker delivery of specific tasks and streamlining communication and efficiency. For example, with this structure, building a report for executives doesn’t require engaging both engineering and analytics teams; instead, one can directly collaborate with the visualization specialist for faster and more accurate results.
Deliverable 5 – Role and technology recommendations
Wavicle recommended key roles and technologies for the home builder. This included new leadership to champion business interests and strategize data operations, data stewards to advocate for their business units’ data needs, and specialized technical roles to maintain technology agnosticism within the IT infrastructure. In addition, Snowflake was strongly recommended as a technology the home builder was highly interested in using that could help to deliver on many of their strategic initiatives.
The impact of a comprehensive data strategy
Wavicle’s data strategy and data governance recommendations have strategically positioned the home builder to implement a modernized data ecosystem. The prioritized use cases, refined future state architecture, and governance playbook lay out specific steps and milestones, guiding the implementation for this end-to-end modernization effort. Future-ready data infrastructure, a strategic operating model, and well-planned data team will help the home builder transform their data and analytics operations.
Implementing Wavicle’s recommendations is expected to result in notable enhancements across the business, enabling new data and analytics capabilities to help the company improve operations with insights ranging from enterprise cost and profitability analysis to pricing strategies and cost optimization. A modernized infrastructure will also support streamlining supply and demand planning and increasing efficiency in inventory risk management, highlighting the positive business impact of a holistic data strategy.
As the home builder transitions into the implementation phase for this new data ecosystem, these strategic initiatives will serve as a solid foundation. The staged approach, meticulous data governance approach, and technology recommendations are expected to translate into tangible improvements, fostering a data-centric environment that is not only modernized but also adaptable to the organization’s changing needs.