If you’ve been following InterWorks over the years, you know we love a good metaphor for data and analytics concepts. Our newest metaphor might just be our freshest one yet. We call it the Data Laundry Cycle. I’ll give a quick explanation of how it works, followed by a more detailed guide that you can download for free.

What Is the Data Laundry Cycle?

Imagine data like a closet full of clothes. When data is dirty, disorganized or inaccessible, it’s like a pile of wrinkled clothes. When it’s clean, organized and available, you can easily pick out info that presents your business at its finest. That all sounds great, but how do you make it happen? The basic premise goes something like this:

Source Systems (Dirty Laundry): Raw data is like dirty laundry. You have different formats, qualities and sources, just like your clothes have different colors, fabrics and levels of dirtiness.

ETL Solutions (Laundromat): Much like a laundromat helps you sort, wash, dry and fold your clothes, ETL solutions help you extract, ingest, transform, clean and organize your data.

Production Data Warehouse (Organized Closet): When clothes are clean and sorted, you arrange them in your closet. When data is clean and sorted, you arrange it in an accessible and trusted data warehouse.

Dive Deeper with Our Free Guide

Of course, this is all an incredibly simplified view of how to go from convoluted source data to sparkling insights, but it’s important to know the basics before delving deeper. Speaking of which, you can indeed delve deeper via our free Data Laundry Cycle Guide, which you can download here.

What will you find here? You’ll see more context for the above steps, but the big takeaway is a detailed map of common data challenges, recommendations for improving them and the potential outcomes/benefits as a result.

You can download the guide for free below but know that our team is always ready to talk through your specific data challenges and can provide a wealth of expertise and relevant solutions to help you prepare your data for organizational success. Just give us a shout!

The post Sorting Out Success: The Data Laundry Cycle appeared first on InterWorks.

Our stretch of conferences for 2025 continues next week with the highly anticipated Databricks Data + AI Summit, held in San Francisco (and online!) from June 9-12. Databricks has been making some serious waves the past few years. Their Data Intelligence Platform, built on an open lakehouse architecture, is loved by InterWorks’ data engineers and clients alike. If you’re totally new to Databricks, we recommend you give their website a visit!

For those of you who are familiar with Databricks or are simply curious what the Data + AI Summit is all about, we thought we’d put together a conference primer sourced directly from the InterWorks team members who will be attending.

This is Databricks’ biggest event of the year, so you can expect keynote sessions from the Databricks top brass. There’s also plenty of opportunity to hear directly from the Databricks development team about new features and functionality, along with hands-on demos for you to test drive them yourself. Beyond that, you can choose from over 700 sessions hosted by talent from the world’s leading organizations. JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Anthropic, Meta, DoorDash, PepsiCo Inc., Rivian, Coinbase, etc… These are just a few of the names on the presenter list!

Now, let’s get into the weeds. Here’s what our team is excited about for the Data + AI Summit:

Ryan Callihan, Analytics Lead
(View Profile)

Recently, with Databricks’ Data + AI Summit coming right on the heels of the Snowflake Summit, it’s fascinating to see what these two behemoths announce in such a short time frame. Their announcements are often made in direct competition with one another. More importantly, they incrementally shift the data landscape, as both Databricks and Snowflake heavily influence the modern data stack.

At this year’s conference, my focus is on understanding the Databricks roadmap, especially around AI/BI tooling such as Dashboards, Genie and any new agent-driven analytics features. Beyond gawking at features released in the keynote, I’m particularly interested in talking to customers to understand their enthusiasm towards and possible adoption of these tools.

Are enterprise customers willing to move critical parts of their analytics into the their data platform? If so, what does that transition look like? And what other legacy tooling are they replacing by using Databricks AI/BI instead?

Justin Lemmon, Data Lead
(View Profile)

There is a lot to cover here, but here’s what I’m looking at broken down by different focus areas. Some of these things are known to some degree, and we’re just excited to learn more about them. Other areas have open questions, some about specific functionality within Databricks’ and others at a higher level:

GenAI and AI Agents

• How are enterprises operationalizing GenAI/LLMs and agents for real business value?
• How do businesses assess their readiness for AI?

Data Intelligence and Governance

• What’s new in data sharing, privacy and governance (Unity Catalog, Delta Sharing, Data Clean Rooms)? What about automated policy management, data contracts and secure data sharing?
• Ethics and security around responsible AI implementation.
• Data mesh and domain-focused governance in practice.

Lakehouse and Analytics Modernization

• How are organizations modernizing analytics and BI with the lakehouse paradigm?
• How are companies optimizing cost with ever-increasing data and analytics needs?

Industry Use Cases

• What are the most impactful case studies in our clients’ industries?
• Which industry-specific compliance measures and concerns should we know about?

Data Quality and Observability

• Integration with Databricks and/or building within Databricks.
• Automated monitoring and alerting.

Other

• ELT, additional surprises.

Additional Questions

• What are the biggest blockers to AI adoption and how are leaders overcoming them?
• How are companies measuring and proving ROI from data and AI investments?
• What are the best practices for secure, governed and scalable AI solutions?
• What are recommended architectures and proven use cases?
• What skills/certifications are most in demand for data/AI teams in 2025?
• How can InterWorks support gap analyses for clients? Aaaaaand don’t forget change management!
• Which new Databricks features/tools can give our clients a competitive edge?

As you can see, there is a lot I’m hoping to learn about at this year’s summit, but I think spurring this much curiosity is a good thing. These are questions very big players are trying to answer.

Karl Riddett, Strategy Lead
(View Profile)

AI/BI

Is this the new “self-service” approach? What Databricks is building through LLMs and their AI models should allow easy access for ad hoc queries/one-off questions and be able to do this in a ChatGPT-like interface. Initial demos I’ve seen are looking great. Could this be the answer for non-technical personnel to get easy access to their analytical questions without having to go to a dashboard or using a tool like ThoughtSpot? We have a client that is asking exactly those questions as a dbx customer. I am going to be working with them on that strategy this upcoming week.

Metadata

The biggest opportunity for AI to help make data engineering easier is for metadata automation. Snowflake has already made major announcements this week. What will be Databricks’ answer to that? Unity Catalogue was a game-changer when they released that. What AI-driven enhancements will come to make life easier for data teams?

Cost Management

The same client in my first section wants to manage current BI tool costs. As an existing Databricks customer, they also want to keep spend at a manageable level. I plan on coming back with some best practices after the show on cost management, which I may write about in additional detail.

Matt Woods, Services Lead
(View Profile)

Here are a few things I’m looking forward to next week:

New Feature and Product Announcements

The tight competition between Databricks and Snowflake has led to a massive amount of development on both platforms. Combined with the two company’s summits being back-to-back (in the same convention center no less), this is a wild time of year for the data, analytics and AI spaces.

This is probably a me thing, but every year I’m fascinated to see what features and capabilities are integrated into the Databricks platform itself as opposed to relying on third-party tools. This shows what areas Databricks is prioritizing, and it has a huge impact on platform adoption, data architecture and tooling.

Customer Stories

Getting to hear real world use cases and their impact is almost always interesting and informative. It better grounds me in understanding what’s useful and what’s not from a practical standpoint.

Technical Sessions

These are a great opportunity to focus on improving knowledge and skills, and it’s hard not to love that! We also like to work on our certifications at the summit as it’s a good time to focus on a subject and use the in-person proctoring services. That’s a testing environment that many of us are more used to which can be beneficial. Plus, the swag is great!

Jackson Reber, Data Engineer
(View Profile)

Honestly, I’m really looking forward to just learning more about Databricks best practices in regard to pretty practical data engineering tasks and concepts. I’ve been working with dbx for close to a year now, and while I’ve interacted with many aspects of Databricks, there is still so much I haven’t explored.

There are a ton of ways to do the same thing in Databricks, so I really want to narrow in on “best practices” and recommendations from Databricks themselves on the best way to approach some of the more common data engineering tasks/problems I’ve encountered in my experience.

Most of the sessions I’ve signed up for are very much “common sense” type sessions. These aren’t talking about any flashy new tool or AI integration, but rather sessions about common data engineering tasks or problems and the best ways to approach them. Since Databricks is a newer tool in the InterWorks ecosystem, I want to use this conference as a way to really build up our internal data engineering documentation for Databricks and find the best resources for newer data engineers getting familiar with Databricks

Of course, at these conferences, it is nearly impossible to avoid sessions about flashy new tools or AI integrations, so I’m sure I’ll get some of that as well. I’m also hoping to take and pass the Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional certification.

Chris Chang, Data Engineer
(View Profile)

I have four general areas I’m looking forward to at this year’s Data + AI Summit:

• General data pipeline optimization techniques
• Interoperability and data governance best practices with our current partners
• Understanding more about Apache Spark
• Meeting up with everyone else on the InterWorks team!

Explore Databricks with Us!

A lot of ground is going to be covered at the Data + AI Summit, and we expect there will be plenty of Databricks chatter to parse through. Even so, this might be the best time to dive into Databricks if you’re ready to explore lakehouse architecture. We’d love to help you on that journey! If you’re ready to learn how Databricks can impact your data stack directly, reach out to us today!

The post InterWorks’ Primer on the Databricks Data + AI Summit 2025 appeared first on InterWorks.

Conference season is in full swing! If you’re in the data warehousing and data cloud world at all, then you know we have a big one coming up next week. That’s right, Snowflake Summit 2025 officially kicks off next week from June 2-5 (that’s Monday to Thursday for the date-challenged like myself) in San Francisco.

As it happens, this year’s Snowflake Summit appears to be a doosy. With over 15 tracks and 500 sessions, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy. Success stories from industry leaders, hands-on sessions to level up your Snowflake skills and everything in between.

Then there’s the Opening, Platform and Builder keynotes. The Platform keynote will include all the main product announcements. The Builder keynote dives into more technical detail on the Platform announcements and features some live demos. They also have the Builders Hub and Platform Peak for those who want to get their hands on some of those shiny new features. Oh, and there’s the Basecamp Expo Hall, Snowbash and … a fireside chat featuring OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy? Say no more.

This is all a long way of saying that there’s lots to look forward to at Snowflake Summit. As a long-time Snowflake Select Partner in the US, Australia and Europe, our team has plenty of thoughts when it comes to what they are personally excited about for this year’s Snowflake Summit. Here’s what they said:

Chris Soule, Data Strategy Director, Americas

“What excites me is that Snowflake typically unveils additional features and abilities to enable practitioners to do even more in their data cloud and make our lives easier. In terms of big ideas, I’m hoping to learn more about how Snowflake is making AI even easier in their Data Cloud. I’m specifically interested in the following two sessions:

• Inside Snowflake Cortex AI: Gen AI and Enterprise Intelligence Capabilities: This will explore how Snowflakes AI capabilities can further help our clients.
• What’s New: Eliminating Data Silos with Horizon Catalog and Internal Marketplace: This dives into how Snowflake is making data governance and mesh concepts even easier for clients.

Finally, since Snowflake is quickly expanding it’s feature set and usefulness, I am looking forward to seeing how all the new features they come out with will assist our clients on their data journeys. If you’re attending Snowflake Summit this year or want to talk in more detail about Snowflake in general, feel free to email me at chris.soule@interworks.com.”

Chris Hastie, Data Lead

“I shared thoughts on LinkedIn about DevDay, which is the final day of Snowflake Summit. In general, my favourite part of these conferences is exploring the main floor. I love seeing the data ecosystem shift each year, meeting new players and seeing how old ones have pivoted. Tools I might have ruled out a year ago suddenly demonstrate cool new functionality that catches my eye, or new players pop up to introduce whole new areas to explore.

A few years ago we rarely discussed many different areas of governance, then a few huge players entered the market and the whole thing kicked off. That’s just one example, but we’ve seen it time and time again. And exploring the trade floor each year let’s you truly feel that growth. For me, that’s easily the highlight.

Of course the keynotes and feature announcements are another huge highlight. One of my favourite things is when I can learn about new functionality in a keynote and immediately go and attend breakout sessions that dive under the hood. Even better when there’s a hands-on lab and I can get straight to using new functionality with my own data.”

Aaron Carmichael, Data Engineer

“Ivan Dosev is actually working on a technical implementation blog about this, so you’ll likely see some more about this pretty soon, but the general idea is that after buying Datavolo, Snowflake now offers a service called Openflow that actually lives outside of Snowflake on your Cloud infrastructure. This service then handles Extract/Load for different data sources like you’d see from other ETL partners:

• Pros: Extract/Load without buying a whole new tool. Less IT overhead and management needed since it’s all a single platform.
• Cons/Unknowns: Complexity to set up. Setting up Openflow involves configuring a bit of your own cloud architecture, so it’s a bit more involved.

No clue what pricing implications look like right now. Logically, it’d be cheaper to use this than invest in another platform, but I don’t know for certain how easy it’d be to quickly run up an AWS bill or something similar.”

Taylor Miles, Data Engineer

“Last year’s Snowflake Summit happened right around the time of a front-page data breach that involved their platform. While the company with which the breach occurred shouldered the blame due to their lapse in security practices, Snowflake’s name popped up quite a bit in those headlines as, ultimately, that’s the fortress that was Trojan Horse-d.

In response, Snowflake has pushed out notable changes in their security features, such as the Trust Center, and they are pushing customers into modern security practices (which we are loving over here at InterWorks). Now that a year has passed and they’ve had time to prepare, I am looking forward to hearing about the continued evolution in best practices, lessons learned and roadmap for keeping data secure.

Here are some sessions on that front that piqued my interest:

• Best Practices for Protecting Sensitive Data and Simplifying Compliance
• The First Line of Defense: Secure Network Connectivity Strategies for Snowflake
• Best Practices for Protecting Against Credential Theft and Data Exfiltration

AI remains the focus for the data world in 2025, unsurprisingly, as it’s the shiny new car that everyone is, and should be, talking about. With that, I am keen to learn how Snowflake and its practitioners are governing and securing their data to enable a safe and sustainable partnership with AI. Despite its advances, there is still heavy reliance on fundamental best practices around data to be truly useful.

As environmental and pricing concerns surface, an eye toward the software adage “garbage in, garbage out” becomes more and more important. Data Governance is a necessary, though often neglected, tenant of the modern data ecosystem. So, what’s the Snowflake Summit have to say on the matter? Under the Session Track: “Governance, Security, and Discovery,” the following sessions caught my eye:

• Governing Data in an Era of AI and Consumer Consent
• How to Manage Data Quality, Security and Cost Visibility for AI

If I sound skeptical or disinterested in the hype around the AI revolution and perhaps too risk-averse, well, blame my editor: Gemini. Just kidding. In reality, I respect what AI can do, but we owe ourselves to be mature and meticulous in its adoption given its disruptive and near-magical nature. Wanting what’s best for our clients means advocating both for the flashy, convenient self-driving features and the seat belt and brake and airbag enhancements that should come along with it.”

Justin Lemmon, Data Lead

“100% agreed with Aaron and Taylor above on OpenFlow and governance + security. I’d tack on Horizon Catalog and new features + integrations to the governance point. I’d add AI-focused pieces (keynote is with Sam Altman, and I’m sure that’ll gather a lot of attention). We’ll be interested in Cortex, Document AI, and implementation trends and innovations there.

Also of note are some tracks about related ethics and governance. Open formats, Apache Iceberg and Snowflake Open Catalog are big topics worth exploring. I’m curious what all they are doing there, along with other interoperability advancements.

I’d be on the lookout for cost optimization strategies, as well. At Data Council we saw several companies focusing exclusively on that, and I want to see how Snowflake responds and if they implement new features around that.”

Dakota Murdock, Data Engineer

“I’m looking forward to hearing from Sam Altman in the keynote about how AI will continue to grow in its impact on everything we do. The opportunity to hear from a visionary and innovator like him is special.

While AI will be a common thread throughout the conference, as someone who spends my days building practical solutions for clients, I’m especially focused on technical topics where the rubber meets the road. Two key areas for me are security and data integration.

With security, I want to make sure the platforms I build and work on for clients are not just performant but also follow the latest in security best practices. I’ll be digging into the latest in private connectivity options, network policy design, credential protection, data exfiltration safeguards and continuous auditing with Trust Center.

On the data integration side, I’m carving out time for multiple sessions covering Snowflake’s new Data Integration service. I’m excited to understand how this native service handles everything from structured, unstructured, batch or streaming jobs without relying on third-party tools. I’m focused on how we can start using it to streamline client architectures and cut down on complexity and costs.”

Brooks Barth, Analytics Lead

“For starters, I’m stoked on Snowflake Summit being a core Modern Data Stack conference. Each year, it grows in momentum as more people join the Snowflake ecosystem. From what I can see, there’s some great vendor representation this year, and I’m particularly excited about Sigma being present as it’s shaping up to be a compelling BI tool in our current reference architecture. From a more platform and feature-specific standpoint, I’m interested in exploring Cortex as a SQL-first AI / RAG engine for structured and unstructured data.”

Want to Go Further with Snowflake Post-Summit?

There will be a lot of new information to process once Snowflake Summit ends. The question then is where will you go with Snowflake next? If you’re looking for the ideal strategic partner, InterWorks’ is here to help! Even if you’re completely new to Snowflake, we can get help determine if it’s the right fit for you and even conduct a Snowflake Rapid Start. Whatever you’re need, we’d love to chat. Learn more about our Snowflake services at our Snowflake partner page.

The post InterWorks’ Guide to Snowflake Summit 2025 appeared first on InterWorks.

When it comes to the business intelligence sphere, InterWorks provides quite an array of services and solutions. From foundational data engineering and data architecture to helping clients create beautiful dashboards, it’s truly end to end.

One area we’ve seen explode in recent years is an increased focus on user experience (UX). Often, organizations get caught up in specific platforms and deliverables without closely considering how those things are interacted with and by whom. You could have sparkling clean data and jaw-dropping dashboards, but unless you make it easy and enjoyable for relevant audiences to access and process insights that matter to them, even the best efforts can fall flat.

Even the term UX is loaded as it often merely implies designing systems, dashboards or portals in a better way. While it certainly does include those efforts, there’s much more to building engaging user experiences that one might not expect.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with my colleague David Duncan to learn about his favorite projects this year and how both of those projects involved broadening the definitions of user experience and design at a fundamental level.

Going Beyond Standard Dashboard Rollout

We started by discussing the work David did for the healthcare provider, which centered around their use of Curator by InterWorks, an embedded analytics platform that allows for complete customization:

As our client was rolling out several new dashboards to Curator, they also had a lot of new methodology and terminology surrounding how they take care of patients. To help them communicate that context and boost user enablement of the dashboards, we decided to create a series of explainer videos that could sit next to the dashboards within dedicated landings pages in Curator.

A lot of this centered around treating patients like people instead of numbers. Doctors, nurses and other providers are often looking at patient data through bar charts, so it can be easy to forget the human side of things, furthering the organization’s ongoing conversation about better humanizing their data.

Finding Meaning in the Process

This definitely sounds like a worthwhile project that adds more impact for the client and their patients, but David went on to say that the process of creating this videos was just as rewarding:

We started the process by learning and listening to what the clients goals were and the various systems involved in this initiative – not just dashboards and Curator, but every piece of the puzzle as well as their overarching methodology. We then asked them to come up with five scripts for each topic they wanted to cover. We then helped edit those down, imposing word count limits to keep them from being too verbose.

Of course, once the scripts were pinned down, David got to work on turning text into media:

From there, I created a storyboard for each video, which was mostly about topics like workforce planning and connecting the right providers to patients. These started as hand-drawn sketches, then moved to more sophisticated mockups, and finally become polished videos with nice design elements and animations. When we got to the voiceover portion, we were fortunate to enlist the help of my UK colleague Vicky Lockett who, though she doesn’t do voiceovers for a living, is very good at them. It also just made sense for UK users to hear a UK voice.

Above: An example of the storyboards for this project.

The Unexpected Benefits of Working with a Full-Service Consultant

As David and I wrapped our conversation, he closed with some realty solid points about what benefits working with a relationship-focused, full-service consulting firm can bring to clients like this one:

A lot of people think what we do is simply building better bar charts, but for me personally, as well as many others at InterWorks, its so much more. We consider how things like dashboards will be adopted, will they really resonate with people, can they use it easily and how exactly will they use it? It’s also more than giving them clean and polished interfaces like Curator. Overall, we want to create a sort of immersive realm and ecosystem where everyone shares a common language.

We also talked about the unique advantage someone specifically like David brings to projects like these that’s uncommon in the analytics field, especially in larger firms:

This project was really interesting in that it was truly at the intersection of data and design. If our client had gone with a large data consulting firm, they probably wouldn’t have received the same variables and depth of care. We’re deeply familiar with the tools our client is using and the goals they want to achieve. We want to achieve those in a way that’s authentic to them vs. something that’s not grounded in reality. This is especially relevant for more budget-conscious clients, and we always try to work within those parameters responsibly.

Adding to that, in this project specifically, there were a lot of elements that would traditionally need to be done by a marketing agency, which can also cost an exorbitant amount of money. Even then, those agencies don’t have designers who understand what a parameter action is or how different data sources connect to each other, but this is the sort of niche experience that I’m fortunate to have and excited to share with clients like this.

I’ve had the great pleasure of working with David for many years, but there’s always something new to learn! In my opinion, he captures exactly what the essence of working with InterWorks is like in terms of both tangible and intangible benefits.

The post My Favorite Project of 2024: Holistic UX Consulting in Healthcare appeared first on InterWorks.

Ah, December! The month that was once ruled by many festive holidays is now ruled by quite a different cultural phenomenon: the release of everyone’s Spotify Wrapped.

However you feel about Spotify Wrapped these days, there’s no denying that it taps into a very effective mode of communication that’s been employed for ages. Recaps, rollups, listicles and summaries all come in many different forms. As humans, we love taking stock of our favorite things and seeing what others’ favorite things are, as well.

It’s at this point that you’re probably wondering how I’m going to shoehorn something like Spotify Wrapped with InterWorks. While you’re not entirely off the mark, I’m going to spare you from co-opting Spotify’s branding and language and simply share a few lists of our top-performing content for 2024. No auto-generated playlists, no adjective-laden mood analyses and certainly no “dynamic” AI podcast hosts – just some ordered lists with a bit of commentary.

Whenever making end-of-year lists that involve ranking content pieces, there are about a million ways to slice and dice the data, as well as many variables to consider. For this post, we’re going to keep it simple and rank by top-level metrics like pageviews for blog posts, downloads for downloadable content, attendees for webinars and reactions for LinkedIn posts.

Our hope is that you find these content pieces useful as so many others have, but I’d also encourage you to spend some time searching for the InterWorks deep cuts! The top content listed here is popular for good reason, but there are so many great content pieces worth exploring from our authors – all of which are written specifically to make your life easier.

Top Blogs Published in 2024

Not going to lie, differentiating between top blog posts for 2024 and top blog posts among posts published in 2024 can make my head hurt a little, despite it being a relatively easy filtering process. Below you’ll find the latter.

Some interesting trend notes here are that 2024 is the first year that our team has publicly written about Power BI, and it’s clear that our audience was receptive to that! Tableau topics are always a hit, as well, and it’s also worth pointing out that Snowflake tips remain a very hot topic (see what I did there?).

Anyways, here’s the top 10:

1. Power BI Case Statements
2. Creating Navigation Buttons in Power BI Using Page Navigator
3. The Medallion Data Architecture
4. Snowflake Network Rules Restrict Access to Specific Private Endpoints
5. Snowflake Row Access Policies Demystified
6. Snowflake External Access: Send Alerts to Teams
7. How to Build a Report in Power BI Desktop
8. Exploring Tableau Pulse to Replace Traditional Dashboards
9. Snowflake External Access: Retrieve Data from an API
10. Tableau Hacks: Multi-Value Parameters

2024 Top Blogs Viewed This Year

This one is easy. Below, you’ll find the most viewed blogs for 2024, regardless of publish date. This is a list that usually doesn’t fluctuate too much, but there are still some interesting insights to be had.

The number one spot you see below has remained a pretty permanent fixture over the years, as well as the other Tableau posts. While Tableau is always evolving, some concepts remain evergreen. The big surprise this year is having three SSH blog posts in the mix from 2021. That might merit further analysis!

Here’s the list:

1. Case Statements vs. IF Statements in Tableau (2015)
2. Setting Up SSH Agent in Windows for Passwordless GIT Authorization (2021)
3. How to Enable SSH Commands in Windows (2021)
4. The Basics of Sheet Swapping in Tableau Desktop (2021)
5. A Quick and Easy Way to Get Active Directory Counts (2018)
6. How to Access a Linux Virtual Machine via SSH from Windows (2021)
7. The Ultimate Guide to Year-Over-Year Comparisons in Tableau (2019)
8. Tableau Essentials: Chart Types – Symbol Map (2014)
9. Understanding Previous Value in Tableau (2021)
10. Tableau Essentials: Chart Types – Circle View (2014)

2024 Top Downloadable Content

We’ve dabbled with downloadable content in the post, mostly running it through the InterWorks blog, but this year we made a concerted effort to differentiate what goes on the blog vs. content that feels a little different, whether it comes in the form of a printable checklist or detailed white paper and guides. Regardless of the format, these pieces are built to provide targeted insight borne from years of cross-functional, on-the-ground experience.

Here’s what we have:

1. Tableau Dashboard Optimization Checklist
2. Semantic Layers in Action: Real-World Use Cases & Business Impact
3. The 5 Biggest Pain Points for Data & Analytics Leaders
4. Tableau Cloud Migration Checklist
5. Level Up in Tableau Desktop
6. Getting Started in Tableau Desktop

2024 Top Webinars Attended

Our live webinar events are always fascinating and cover a wide variety of topics. I’ll add that seeing our consultants live and in their element really takes knowledge acquisition to the next level. Heck, I even entered the webinar fray this year with a new monthly “Data Forum” series alongside the incomparable Annabelle Rincon!

Here are the top webinars by live attendance this year:

1. Go! Tableau (Nov. 20)
2. Data Forum: How Classic Learning Tools and AI Can Enable Data Visualizers (Sep. 24)
3. Tableau Cloud Migration Readiness (June 6)
4. Go! Tableau (Sept. 4)
5. BI Strategy: Assessing Tools & Methodologies (June 24)
6. Exploring the Semantic Layer (Nov. 25)
7. Go! Tableau (Feb. 28 / Not Listed)
8. Go! Tableau (May 15)
9. Actionable Dashboards: Leveraging Reverse ETL and Automation (Aug. 8)
10. How AI is Accelerating Success with Data Governance (Dec. 3)

2024 Top LinkedIn Posts

While the InterWorks website is certainly the hub of our collective knowledge, we are also very much part of the broader data community. The data community is perhaps our favorite thing about working in this industry, and we love seeing all the meaningful work data professionals are doing around the world as well as the things that get them excited. Below, you’ll find our LinkedIn posts of the year. It should come as no surprise that most of them involve either previewing or recapping major data and IT events.

Our top posts for your pleasure:

1. #Data24 Recap
2. InnoTech Recap
3. #Data24 Find Your Path Promo
4. Omni Partnership Announcement
5. #data24 Presenter Recap
6. Big Data London Chris Hastie Talk Recap
7. Data Village Day 1 Booth Recap
8. Data + Women Happy Hour Recap
9. Data + Women Happy Hour Promo
10. AUS Healthcare Event Recap

That’s a Wrap on 2024! What’s Next?

2025, obviously! But in all seriousness, as we put a bookend on a great 2024, we’re more excited than ever for what 2025 has in store for the world of data. At InterWorks, it feels like we’re hitting a confident stride, and I can say with some certainty that even more great data content is just around the corner. Our goal is to always provide useful information across a variety of mediums.

With that in mind, we’d love to hear your ideas for useful content! What topics are you curious about? What knowledge gaps do you need to fill? What content mediums and formats resonate with you? Head to our Contact Us page to let us know!

The post InterWorks’ 2024 Top Data Content Hits appeared first on InterWorks.

Our friends at ThoughtSpot just made a huge announcement concerning their partner ecosystem, and we’re thrilled to share that InterWorks earned two ThoughtSpot Partner of the Year awards for 2023:

• ThoughtSpot Americas Emerging Partner of the Year
• ThoughtSpot EMEA Partner of the Year

That’s some serious global coverage! We’ve been big fans of ThoughtSpot for years now, and 2023 has been a truly ascendant year for the platform as the world of business intelligence and data analytics continues to evolve. As our way of saying thanks, we thought we’d ask ThoughtSpot champions across InterWorks what they love above our partnership and the ThoughtSpot platform. We even share some notes on what kind of organizations might get a lot of value from ThoughtSpot.

What We Love About ThoughtSpot as a Partner

“At my first ThoughtSpot Beyond two years ago, I had several people from ThoughtSpot come up to me and ask how they could better enable us to work with their APIs. They were excited to see what we were doing with ThoughtSpot in Curator and wanted to do whatever they could to make it a success. It’s quite a bit different than other companies where we have to hunt down someone who can help us.”

– Derrick Austin, Curator Platform Lead, InterWorks

“We love that they proactively want to partner with us. They see the need for partnering with companies like InterWorks, and they value our opinion. Having access to all leadership across their organization has made a huge impact in building a strong partnership.”

– Aaron Confer, Global Director of Business Development, InterWorks

“ThoughtSpot is always proactively asking for our feedback on new features and overall customer/consultant sentiments around the product. I’ve never had less than a 24-hour lapse between question and answer, no matter how complex.”

– Jack Hulbert, Analytics Architect, InterWorks

“They listen to their customers partners, and the broader data environment to make meaningful product updates that people actually want! They’re innovative. We love seeing them push the envelope with Search and Sage (AI) and love enabling our clients to hit the ground running with them.”

– Ty Ketchum, Delivery Architect, InterWorks

What We Love About ThoughtSpot as a Platform

“ThoughtSpot requires customers to be deliberate about how their data is modeled for analytics. The simplicity of the tool allows for a clearer path to production. Emphasis is placed on usability for non-technical folk (search, GPT, integrations with common-folk business apps). This equates to faster-speed-to-reporting for them, as well as less effort for analysts and data engineers when fielding ad hoc requests.”

– Jack Hulbert, Analytics Architect, InterWorks

“ThoughtSpot has fully embraced the self-service approach to data analytics. The overall end-user experience is much less about building dashboards for people to consume and much more about getting the data right. This way, users can do whatever they want with the data, whenever they want, on their own.”

– Robby White, Enablement Consultant, InterWorks

Who Should Use ThoughtSpot?

“ThoughtSpot is a solid fit for cloud-native organizations that want a lean BI/reporting workflow that scales with your user base. It’s also ideal for organizations that are building analytical applications and websites for internal or customer use.”

– Jack Hulbert, Analytics Architect, InterWorks

“ThoughtSpot is perfect for organizations that are interested in true self-service analytics. Instead of your data/IT teams drowning in a never-ending backlog, ThoughtSpot allows you to get your data modeling done right once and then pass the baton on to your broader business to analyze it however they see fit. Organizations that are interested in what BI could look like instead of a bunch of dashboards will enjoy the ThoughtSpot Search experience. For organizations specifically interested in a seamless embedded analytics experience, ThoughtSpot Everywhere is a heavy focal point.”

–  Ty Ketchum, Delivery Architect, InterWorks

Ready to Make the Most of ThoughtSpot?

Let’s say you’re considering ThoughtSpot or you’ve just purchased the platform. Do you have a plan in place to ensure you’re getting the most out of your investment? How will you gain and grow new users? You don’t have to answer these questions alone! In fact, this is exactly where InterWorks can make a big difference.

InterWorks is the first and only ThoughtSpot partner to provide a comprehensive customer success and adoption program. We call it InterWorks Plus ThoughtSpot. Head to the link below to learn how InterWorks Plus ThoughtSpot can help your adoption efforts.

Learn More

The post InterWorks Earns 2 ThoughtSpot 2023 Partner of the Year Awards appeared first on InterWorks.

Whether you’re currently picking up your badge in Las Vegas or anxiously awaiting the livestream, Tableau Conference 2023, a.k.a. #data23, is officially here! Buckle up for a few days packed full of jaw-dropping Tableau updates, fantastic breakout sessions, networking, training and, of course, a whole lot of fun.

So, what are the best things to do and see to make the most of your Tableau Conference experience? That’s a question only you can answer! The truth is that it’s really hard to go wrong, no matter what adventure you choose. With that in mind, we’re going to focus this post on a few broad, objective tips and thoughts to help enrich your conference experience.

After that, we’ll get entirely shameless and share all the InterWorks-sponsored things you can enjoy at this year’s conference. We’re a Groundbreaker Sponsor this year, and while we may be biased, we fully believe you’ll enjoy what we’re bringing this year.

Tips for Making the Most of Tableau Conference

To help with the conference tips, I recruited the help of InterWorkers Keith Dysktra, Ben Bausili and Ken McBride (all conference veterans) to share their advice.

Keith Dykstra, Analytics Lead

“Tableau Conference provides a helpful sneak peek at the trajectory of one of our most important partners. Personally, I always look forward to Devs on Stage the most. The session shows us exciting product developments that often enable easier or more powerful analytics.

Pro tip: To make the most of your TC experience, sit in the front row during break-out sessions. It’s a great way to personally connect with presenters and hear more about topics that interest you.”

Ben Bausili, Global Director of Product

“Tableau Conference represents community. I’ve been to many events, but there’s nothing in my professional experience that has ever come close. I can’t wait to see old friends and hopefully make a few more. Staying on top of new features is always important, but I think the biggest thing is being inspired by the creativity of the community.”

Pro tip: Make time to explore things outside your comfort zone.”

Ken McBride, Regional Director, Americas West

“This is my 12^th Tableau Conference, and it’s grown so much since my first one in San Diego in 2012. The keynotes are always great and never disappointing, and the customer sessions are always a real highlight. My favorite thing about TC is probably the networking. I remember one TC at the MGM a few years ago where I had a long day of sessions and meetings followed by Data Night Out. Even after the party, people still wanted to keep socializing and networking into the early morning hours. We eventually linked up with another group and found ourselves eating pancakes and talking about data challenges at 4:30 in the morning. That to me is the perfect representation of the Tableau Conference energy.

Pro tip(s): Find several coffee options, walk quickly between sessions, wear comfy shoes and hydrate a LOT. Remember that Las Vegas is in the desert. Most of all, learn as much as you can and pack it all in. Tableau Conference is a rare opportunity for growth.”

What InterWorks Is Doing for TC23

First off, InterWorks is a proud to be a Groundbreaker Sponsor for Tableau Conference 2023. With that comes a few things worth sharing that you should check out if your schedule allows!

Swing by Booth 27 in the Data Village

The InterWorks booth is always a lively place! This year, we encourage you to come and ask us anything about data. We’re serious – literally anything! Our multi-disciplined team would love to talk through your challenges. While you’re there, you can catch a hands-on demo of Curator by InterWorks – our embedded analytics platform that allows you to combine multiple BI tools into a customizable UI. Don’t forget to leave without some sweet InterWorks swag!

Tee Up Night One with Some Topgolf

Looking for some fun on your first night of TC23? Join us at Topgolf for food, drinks, networking and of course a few rounds of Topgolf. We’ll be there with several other leading Tableau partners, so it’s a great opportunity make fast friends.

RSVP for Topgolf

Don’t Miss Our Two Sessions!

Still have room on your calendar? We’d love for you to fit in one of our informative sessions. Here’s a little about each:

Stop Wasting Time with Modern Analytics

3:00 p.m. PDT – Tuesday, May 9

The modern analytics landscape is exploding. The right strategy will save your team valuable time. Join us to discuss key cultural and technical aspects of a competitive analytics infrastructure.

Add to Agenda

Curator: Embedded Analytics Made Easy

1:00 p.m. PDT – Tuesday, May 9

Embedded analytics doesn’t have to be hard, and with Curator by InterWorks, it’s downright easy. Curator allows you to unify analytic systems into a custom-branded website with no coding required.

Add to Agenda

Stay Current with Our TC23 Live Blog

Want to stay on top of all the Tableau Conference action as it happens? There’s a live-blog for that! Follow along with InterWorks’ System Engineer Ryan Alexander as he documents his entire conference experience.

Follow the Live Blog

Enjoy TC23!

That should cover all the InterWorks bases, and we sincerely hope you enjoy your Tableau Conference experience. If you’re in Las Vegas this week, we hope we get to see you! If you’re tuning in virtually, you can certainly connect with us via social media, or drop us a line via our Contact Us page. Tableau Conference is great at inspiring action, and we’re always ready to help you find the next best step on your data journey.

The post InterWorks’ Tableau Conference 2023 Primer appeared first on InterWorks.

2022 was a massive year for the InterWorks Australia team, and we’re thrilled to cap it off with the news that Matillion just named us their ANZ Partner of the Year for 2022! We have a strong relationship with Matillion globally, but our Australian team and clients particularly love Matillion’s Data Productivity Cloud and all the benefits it brings to their data stack.

“Matillion continues to be an excellent partner to work with,” said Robert Curtis, Executive Director, APAC, at InterWorks. “Our company cultures are incredibly aligned, and we share a strong commitment to helping clients fully realize the potential of their data via data transformation. What we’ve been able to achieve together in the Australia / New Zealand market over the past year exemplifies this.”

The Case for Matillion’s Data Productivity Cloud

At InterWorks, we pride ourselves on partnering with vendors that treat our shared clients well and have genuinely innovative products. Matillion and their Data Productivity Cloud fit this description perfectly. If you’re new to Matillion, the Data Productivity Cloud is a data integration platform that allows teams of all skill levels to deliver business-ready data through cloud-native ELT (data extract, load and transform).

“In a time where every business needs to be more efficient than ever, data teams have had to do more with less,” said Josh Lewis, VP of Global Channel and Alliances at Matillion. “The demand for data sharing across business functions is skyrocketing, and the lack of platforms to streamline data productivity slows innovation. Our partners on this list prove that business transformation is possible with a modern data strategy and the Data Productivity Cloud.”

Explore the Data Transformation with InterWorks

Curious how Matillion can streamline your data transformation efforts and uncover new, business-critical insights? The InterWorks team would love to help. Reach out to us today with your challenges, and we’ll show you how the Data Productivity Cloud can make a difference.

The post InterWorks Named Matillion ANZ Partner of the Year for 2022 appeared first on InterWorks.

There were many reasons to celebrate 2022, and we’re excited to add one more to the list: InterWorks was officially named the Dataiku APAC Partner of the Year for 2022! This award represents a lot of hard work and collaboration between InterWorks and Dataiku to help our shared clients in the APAC region tap into the power of everyday AI.

“Our partnership with Dataiku has been incredibly beneficial and enjoyable,” said InterWorks Regional Director, APAC, Robert Curtis. “Dataiku continues to double down on making their platform more accessible and dynamic to our clients, and it’s been nothing short of transformative. They share the same values of excellence as we do and are deeply committed to helping clients succeed. They’re a joy to work with.”

Everyday AI for Australia and Beyond

InterWorks is a global company, so of course we’re also a global Dataiku partner, helping clients in Australia, Singapore, the U.S., Europe and UK alike make the most of Dataiku’s powerful AI and machine learning capabilities. That said, we’ve seen heavy interest in Dataiku within the APAC market.

“InterWorks is a standout in ANZ based on marketing commitment, certifications achieved, opportunity collaboration and lead generation,” said Dataiku Regional Partner Lead ANZ, Karen Cook. “Their team is enthusiastic and competent, and we are looking forward to many more successful collaborations with InterWorks in 2023.”

Above all, we firmly believe in the technology and support behind Dataiku’s dynamic platform. For ages, machine learning and AI were reserved for massive analytics practices with highly specialized resources. The beauty of Dataiku is that it brings that same power (and some) into an incredibly easy-to-use, cloud-based package. You don’t have to have “data scientist” or “senior analytics manager” in your job title to get value out of Dataiku, hence their “everyday AI” mantra. We’re believers in the claim because we’ve seen it in action among clients of various sizes and industries.

Give Dataiku a Try!

If you’re interested in seeing if Dataiku can streamline or deepen your analytics stack, there’s no better time than now. Give their 14-day free trial a whirl and/or feel free to contact the InterWorks team for more hands-on guidance! We’d love to show you everything Dataiku can do.

The post InterWorks Recognized as Dataiku APAC Partner of the Year for 2022 appeared first on InterWorks.

We’ve been sharing it to social media for a while now, but we thought it was high time we shared something on the blog to bolster a very exciting announcement that took place at the start of the 2022 fall semester: InterWorks is officially partnering with Oklahoma State University to launch a new analytics help desk and internship program for the university called Spears Assist Powered by InterWorks.

What Is Spears Assist?

Spears Assist is a specialized, student-staffed help desk built to answer analytics questions from across OSU’s Spears School of Business. Students and faculty alike can send in questions about data, Excel, Tableau Software and receive the answers they need in a timely fashion. Questions can be answered virtually or in-person.

Spears Assist is overseen by Spears Assist Coordinators, Dr. Evan Davis and Kim Strom. The inaugural class is comprised of 11 interns enrolled at OSU who have shown exceptional aptitude in analytics as well as a talent for assisting others.

How Is InterWorks Involved?

InterWorks is the primary sponsor for Spears Assist and donated $200,000 to help fund the program for the next few years. More than that, Spears Assist is directly modeled off Assist by InterWorks – our own comprehensive analytics helpline that supports clients through troubleshooting and optimization of their analytics platforms and tools.

Spears Assist is also backed entirely by Assist by InterWorks. Our talented bench of analytics consultants, data engineers and architects act as a point of escalation as well as invaluable mentors for Spears Assist interns looking to sharpen their skills for in-demand analytics jobs upon graduation.

The Stillwater Connection

You might be wondering: Why OSU? Why InterWorks? Both OSU and InterWorks call Stillwater, Oklahoma, home, and we feel a strong commitment to support our community and educational institutions therein.

InterWorks employs dozens of OSU alumni, including CEO Behfar Jahanshahi who has also been deeply involved with the Spears School of Business in various capacities over the years. OSU is investing heavily into its analytics curriculum and degree programs, and we want to be a part of helping to prepare the next generation of analytics talent for success.

Finally, it’s no secret that InterWorks is always on the lookout for the best talent. Being so heavily involved with OSU and Spears Assist gives us a more direct line to these individuals. But whether these students ultimately work at InterWorks or pursue other exciting opportunities, we feel proud of the small part we get to play in their journey as well as the overall impact it has on making OSU and Stillwater incredible places to call home.

Learn More About Spears Assist

Curious to learn more details about Spears Assist? You can check out the official Spears Assist page or read through the initial OSU news release. If you have questions about Assist by InterWorks or any other InterWorks offerings, we’d love to hear from you.

The post Oklahoma State University Launches Spears Assist Powered by InterWorks appeared first on InterWorks.