Making Alation a Daily Part of Data Culture: Key Insights

In an era where data is foundational to nearly every business process, building a robust data culture has become not just an option but a necessity for organizations aiming to excel. 

This was the crux of a recent illuminating Alation brief led by Mau Lorenzetti, Senior Professional Services Consultant at Alation. In this brief, Mau unveiled the blueprint for cultivating a thriving data culture, showcasing how Alation’s dynamic platform transforms data from mere numbers into a catalyst for profound organizational change.

"Data culture is a hot word, a trendy topic that has been around for some years. I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon," Mau said, setting the tone for an insightful discussion on the critical role data plays in modern business. In this blog, we’ll recap the key takeaways from the brief (also feel free to check out the recording below!)

What is data culture?

At its core, data culture refers to an organizational value where data is expected to drive decisions at all levels. Various companies may define it differently, but the central premise remains the same: data should be at the heart of decision-making across the organization. Mau shared a few definitions from Alation customers to illustrate how people define it differently.

This philosophy extends beyond just technical teams—data culture is inclusive, meaning both technical and business users benefit from data access and understanding. It’s about creating an environment where everyone can leverage data to enhance their decision-making processes.

"We want everybody to benefit from having access to data, being able to interpret it better, and therefore being able to make better decisions," Mau emphasized. In other words, data culture isn’t just for data scientists or IT teams—it’s for everyone.

Why data culture matters

Building a data-driven culture offers numerous advantages, from faster decision-making to increased engagement and improved productivity. Businesses with a strong data culture often experience cost savings, revenue growth, and a more empowered workforce. Data culture, when done right, can lead to more informed decisions, a better understanding of market trends, and ultimately, a competitive edge.

How to build a data culture: strategy, insight, action

A successful data culture doesn’t materialize overnight; it requires a deliberate strategy, actionable insights, and concrete actions. Mau broke it down into three pillars: Strategy, Insights, and Actions, offering practical guidance for building a data culture.

The first step is establishing a clear strategy. This begins with leadership buy-in, ensuring that the message comes from the top down. "It needs to be a top-down approach for it to really work. The message has to come from leadership and trickle down to all levels," Mau explained. When executives champion the importance of data, it permeates the entire organization, creating a solid foundation for a data-driven culture.

Building a strategy involves setting clear expectations and creating a roadmap with leadership support and realistic timelines. It’s about laying the groundwork for a cultural shift that integrates data into the fabric of everyday decision-making.

Expanding data skills and decentralizing expertise

For a data culture to truly thrive, data literacy needs to be spread across the organization. This means decentralizing expertise—moving away from the idea that only data scientists or technical teams should understand and use data. Instead, every employee should be equipped with the skills to interpret data, make data-informed decisions, and contribute to the organization’s data culture.

Mau stressed the importance of expanding data skills throughout the organization, encouraging a democratization of data literacy. "We need to expand those data skills. We want everybody to be able to interpret that data...whether it’s storytelling with dashboards or honing technical skills." By empowering employees at all levels to engage with data, organizations can break down barriers and foster a more collaborative and inclusive data culture.

Practical steps include leadership allocating time for skill development, providing training resources, and encouraging cross-departmental collaboration. As employees grow more comfortable with data, their ability to contribute to the organization’s overall success increases.

Taking Action with Alation

Strategy and insights are essential, but they must be followed by actionable steps. Alation provides organizations with the tools they need to take meaningful action and build a data culture from the ground up.

Mau highlighted how Alation helps companies tackle specific business problems and implement changes incrementally. “We want these initiatives to be tied to business problems. So then that way it expands out to everybody benefiting from this,” he clarified. By starting small and gradually expanding, organizations can accumulate wins and build momentum. This "snowball effect" enables data culture to spread organically across the enterprise.

With Alation, businesses can start with focused initiatives, such as improving data governance or enhancing data discoverability, and expand these efforts as employees become more comfortable working with data.

Incentivizing Change

Mau also emphasized the importance of incentivizing users who embrace data-driven changes. Recognition and rewards can play a significant role in fostering a data culture, encouraging more employees to engage with data.

“Change management is very difficult. So we want to incentivize the people that are doing it right… and we, we want to have positive reinforcement for them,” Mau said. Examples of incentives could include gift recognition, additional PTO, or even using contributions to data culture as leverage during performance reviews. These tangible rewards can motivate employees to embrace data culture and continue to drive positive change within the organization.

Conclusion: Embracing Data Culture with Alation

Mau’s presentation provided a clear roadmap for enhancing data-culture maturity with Alation. By focusing on strategy, insights, and actions, organizations can foster an environment where data drives decisions at all levels. Expanding data literacy, data governance, and data search, while incentivizing change are key components of this journey, ensuring that everyone in the organization can benefit from data.

"Actions, insights, and strategy—that’s how we empower a curious and rational world through data culture," Mau concluded. This message serves as a reminder that data culture isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a powerful force that can transform businesses when approached with intention and the right tools.

To learn more about how Alation can help your organization build a data-driven culture, schedule a demo today.

Full Transcript: Making Alation a Daily Part of Data Culture

Mau Lorenzetti, Senior PS Consultant [00:00:00] Thank you. Deb. Hello, everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. My name is Mal Lorenzini. I am a senior professional services consultant here at Alation. You may know me. We maybe we work together during your right start or during a service package engagement. Or maybe you've worked with, one of my other colleagues, in professional services. But now that we. We have interests out of the way. As you may know, today I'm doing the Alation brief. The the topic is a fun one, right? It's data culture is is a hot word. It's a trendy topic that has been around for some years. Right? So I don't I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon. But what I'm going to talk about today is how we can make Alation a part of, your daily data culture initiatives. Right? What are the things that one can do, on an everyday basis to contribute to your data culture initiatives? 

[00:01:08] So from an agenda perspective, we're going to keep it simple. There's a lot I want to cover, but I also want this to be, a interactive session. So I want to leave time for questions and answers at the end. But where the agenda is going to follow a a what? Why? How? Format. Right. We're going to kick things off with answering the what is a data culture. Then we're going to follow by why why would you want a data culture? How how do you build a data culture? And then of course, using Alation to achieve those initiatives. Right. And I'll be giving some examples that go into actual practices. Right. Not just theory, but actual activities that one can do every day that goes towards your initiatives of a data driven culture. If there's any questions or comments, please put them in the chat. We'll we'll be monitoring them and then we'll, we'll, we'll review them at the end of the call. All right. 

[00:02:12] So from a from a 'what' perspective. What is a data culture? I went into Community, and I searched different definitions that I saw from different companies, different organizations, different contributors. Right. And these are some things that, that, that captured my eye, that, you know, the organizations define a data culture, the first one, turning data into dollars. Right. Nice and simple. Pretty straightforward. If you make faster decisions, you're going to make more money. And so therefore data culture: turning data into dollars. The second one, every business user who is using data should be confident that they can make a good business decision based on the data that they have access to. I think that's a homerun, right? That one is a little bit longer, but it's more specific, right? On who is benefiting from having a data driven culture. There's something in there that that I would like to change. But I'll I'll talk about that here in a little bit. The next two: sticky initiatives that think long term success. Absolutely right. A data-driven culture is not something that happens overnight. Rome was not built in one day. It takes time. It takes efforts. It takes, a group of individuals, and it takes, people actually accepting the change. Right. So it does take time, but I do like that one as well. And then the last one going beyond the data to know what to do. Absolutely right. But from, because we don't have too much time. Let me show you what elation considers the definition to be for data culture. So what we consider the definition to be is an organizational value where data is expected to drive decisions in all levels. Right. You heard me talk about the second one that I'm a I'm a fan of it. The only thing that I would change from that one is the business, right? Yes. The business is a priority. We need to link our data driven culture initiatives for them to receive the benefits. Right? But it shouldn't be all. That shouldn't be the only group of users that reap the rewards of a data driven culture, right? It should be at all levels, regardless if it's technical or business, operational. We want everybody to benefit from, having access to data, being able to interpret it better, and therefore being able to make better decisions. Right. Going into your data-driven culture. 

[00:05:02] So now that we have the what answer, right. Let's let's talk about the the why right. Why would you want a data-driven culture? I think this meme is hilarious. Maybe you've seen it online, maybe not. I actually don't know where it comes from. If if you do, maybe put it in the chat. So then that way, that can be my fun fact. At the bar when I hang out with my friends this weekend. But I think we've all been in that situation, right? Where there's so many decisions, so many outcomes that that, that can happen and you don't know which one to pick, right? You don't know which one is best suited for you, right? Let me show you why you would want that data-driven culture. Right. Some of the outcomes. Top and center. Faster answers to your questions, right. Second one. Increase team engagement. Save costs, increase productivity, and increase revenue. Right. All of that sounds great. Going back to the meme, right, you might think that you have to pick one. Maybe you can get two out of it. But what if I told you that it's a lot simpler to be able to get all of those, right? What if I told you that with Alation, you are able to. To reap the rewards, to be able to get all of those outcomes right? Your, your face might go from sweating and being, nervous to maybe liking that. Right? Making, making a smile and, liking the sound of that. So let me show you how you can drive, a data driven culture in your organization. I'm going to sound like a broken record here, and it's okay. I hope you guys are okay with it. I want you guys to remember these three words, right? How do you build a data-driven culture strategy, insights and actions. I'm going to say them again. Strategy, insights and actions. Right. We're going to start with. With strategy. Right. Starting a data catalog is not going to solve all your problems if you don't have an approach, and if you don't have a strategy going into it, right. Change management is critical to any aspect of a data-driven culture. But we need to show that value, right? If one can show the value of why we're having a why having a data-driven culture is important to your organization, then promoting it and getting buying becomes that much easier, right? Getting that buy in can be difficult at some times. So this is where my first recommendation comes in. It needs to be a top-down approach for it to really work. Right. So, what do I mean by a top-down approach? Right. That that message, that vision has to come, from leadership. Right? Has to come from the C-suite level. It needs to be pushed down to the VPs, to management, and then it trickles down to, to all levels for it to be sustained. Right. It's not something that only one group is doing. We need everybody to be participating in this. Right? Depending on your organization. A reverse method could possibly work at the beginning, right? So what I'm referring to is a down-up approach, right? Bottom to top approach. It it could potentially work, but where you're going to start running into issues is, you need that support, right? Let's be realistic. Data driving a data-driven culture at the beginning can take a lot of time, right? We we, need to allocate resources and time to this initiative. Right. We can't curate, we can't document our business glossaries, overnight. It it takes time and effort to do these things. Right. So that's why a top-down approach works best. Because you have that support, and they're giving you the ability to allocate your time into this. Right. There's a there's a bigger goal that's going to come out of this. 

[00:09:28] From from a setting expectations perspective. Right. This this can mean a lot of things. But if you don't have a plan going into this, right, you're kind of just winging it. You're hoping that it sticks and we don't want that, right? We want you don't have a plan going into this. In an example, of that is a, a engagement that I actually just wrapped up earlier this, this year. They're in the healthcare industry. They're doing really cool things, really innovative things with genetic testing. And one of the, strategies, one of the expectations that their leadership put out there was, if you want to benefit, from using Alation, if you want your team to use alation, because, I guess, to give you some context, they recently got snowflake, and everybody is crazy about it, and they want to use snowflake. And so what leadership put out there is if you want to use snowflake, if you want to migrate your data from, you know, your traditional relational databases and put it into snowflake, we're going to ask one thing of you. We want you to use Alation and to document and curate that information. Right. And I thought that was amazing. Right. There is going to be some hesitation in some teams. Right. But that's the level of expectations that we want leadership to put out there. Right. And giving them the support. Right. They know that that's going to take time if they don't have it documented already. But that's an example of planning and strategy and expectations that leadership can put in place, to reap the rewards in the long run. Right?

[00:11:15] Okay, so that was strategy. I think I talked way too much, but I think you guys get the idea. From an insights perspective, right? We want to expand those those data skills. Right. We don't want all of the application and all of the skill sets to be under just one person. We want to spread that. Right. We want to decentralize those skill sets. We want everybody to be able to interpret that data, whether that means, you know, being able to do storytelling exercises on dashboards, whether that means crafting, or sharpening your technical skills on, you know, writing queries or, you know, code, we want to make sure that your colleagues are all training on these things, right? Of course, it depends on the the role that you are in. We're not going to, as business users to know how to, code in JavaScript. Right? But we we need to expand those data skills and continue to sharpen those skills for you to promote a data-driven culture. Right. An example of that again, is leadership allocating time, per week to be able to do those, those trainings and those skills sharpening. Right. We only have 40 hours a week, right? I'm sure we all put in more than that. But realistically, right is we also have families and individual lives. Right. So, if leadership allocates X amount of hours a week for your team to sharpen those skills, again, sticking to strategy and then giving them that ability to sharpen those skills, you're practicing already, how to build that data driven culture. In my last one. Before we go from theory into actual points, is Alation. Right. Your actions. 

[00:13:17] So now that you have the strategy, now that you have your insights, how do you actually take action and do it right? We want organizations to target change using Alation and get in there and do it. So this is where things get done, right? Here's where we test our strategy. We we see if the insights have been taken from from our colleagues. And we want to affirm that with the new ways of doing these change. Right. We're we're testing the new, the new approach. Right. In regards to using Alation to promote the data-driven culture. This is where we want to focus on business problems behind the data. Right? We don't we don't want it to be, we're doing it just to do it. We want these initiatives to be tied to business problems. So then that way it expands out to everybody benefiting from this, right? From from a rollout perspective. Right. We we want to think about this as a snowball effect. Right. This this is not going to become sticky at an enterprise level from from one day to the other. We want to think about this as small, doing the small wins and accumulating to get traction. Right. And again, this this will make a lot more sense in in my next couple of slides here. Not only do we want to focus on on the current users that we're expanding this into, right, that we're we're practicing these new data driven, culture activities and values. But we also want to start thinking about who's next, right? Who is the next group of users that we want to push. These values, these strategy, these insights and action values down to right. That way you're not thinking enterprise just yet. Right. That's the end goal that you're focusing on now. And you're already thinking about the next group of users that, that you want, to, to get them involved. Right. And lastly of course in incentivize right. Change management is very difficult. So we we want to incentivize, the people that are doing it right, the folks that are, doing this well, and we, we want to have positive reinforcement for them. Right? We want to reward them and recognize them as our champions and that they're accepting these new data-driven changes. Right. Data-driven culture changes. Examples of that. And it depends per organization. Right. But if you guys have some gift recognition or point recognition in, in your organization, that's that's something that has become pretty, pretty big, in the industry across industries using that. Right, rewarding those employees, those users that are practicing these data-driven culture actions and values. Another example. Right. Allocating additional, PTO, if that's, within your, your control. Right. And then you as an individual contributor, if you are practicing these skills, use this as leverage. Right. When when you're having performance reviews, talk to them about how this is important to you. And you want this to be an initiative across your team and across the company, and show them how you've been participating in these different values. Right? So those are just some examples of incentives for adoption and for scaling this. That being said. Right. And just from a time perspective, I'm going to I'm going to skip this slide. I think you guys have seen it. This is our Alation vision. Our vision is to empower a curious and rational world. And how do we do it? By influencing your data culture with elation features and functionality. Right. But again, actions, insights and strategy. I'll go back to this.

[00:17:12] What I want to what I want to really spend some time here is talking about the different personas, right? That, the actual practices that one can do today to contribute to a data-driven culture. There's there's a variety of different people in the call. I think I'm seeing something like 90 folks on this call. I don't know your specific role within your organization. So consider that right. I put four different roles here for different personas. See where you fit. I'm sure you fit in some of. And one of these or maybe split into two. But this gives you some ideas of things that you can be doing today to contribute. Right? Starting with with data science. Right. If you are someone who is, their role is to interpret data and to solve technical problems or business problems, right? To, to answer those questions. You fall into this persona, right? So some things that that you can be doing to participate in a data-driven culture is removing the tribal knowledge, right? No more tribal knowledge documenting what, you know in Alation. Right. Spreading the knowledge through curating titles, curating descriptions, objects, data sets, documentation. It may feel good to be that person where people come and ask you questions. And it's still going to happen, but we want to spread the the wealth, right? We want to be able to document that information in Alation. 

[00:18:47] A second one, if you are, responsible for answering technical problems. Right. People ask you, hey, I need a query that does x, y, z or where can I find, a query that has this type of information publishing that in Alation. Right. So then that way people that are looking for it can go straight into Alation and search for it. I want to leave you here. Let me let me play these. Right. Some some examples of what I just talked about. I think the tribal knowledge one is, is a homerun for me, right? We've we've all been there. You maybe you've been at your organization for some time now, but before then, you were you were relatively new in your organization, right? You were maybe there for three months, six months, eight months, a year. You had all of those questions that kept coming up, and it took time to find where it is. Right? Put yourself in your shoes. When you were in your organization just six months in, right, all of those questions that you had use Alation to answer those right. People are going to have those exact same questions in the future. So let's put that information in the catalog and make our onboarding process that much smoother for future colleagues. All right.

[00:20:07] From an from an IT perspective, right. If you are someone that enables workers to access data systems and tools, and you want to keep it, you want to keep security front and center. This is where you fall into this persona, right? Some things that you can be doing with Alation to drive a data-driven culture is turning on the sampling and profiling features. This is a huge feature that I see a lot of customers not using during the right start. And I get it right. There's their security concerns. And mind you, you don't want to be publishing and exposing sensitivities, but this is an area of large opportunity, right? This reduces ticketing and and processes that IT has to spend so much time to review. If you spend the time to review where the sensitivities are hiding them and then enable the sampling and profiling, you just earned yourself so much time and effort to be able to do something else in the future, right? From a scheduling perspective. Right. Scheduling metadata extraction to run more frequently. Right. You don't want it to run during critical time periods of work, so you want to schedule those that in that way you don't have to be doing that manually. And then the last two is documenting, and reviewing infrastructure information. Right. How'd the data get here? Where does it go? How does it flow? Documented in one place so other technical users, have access to it. And that way they can expand their information on it. And again, reducing reducing tribal knowledge.

[00:21:48] Got two more for you, from, business perspective. Right. If. You are truly someone that, that needs the data, needs to access it, and, you know, you're constantly requesting for information. This kind of goes back to those those three pillars, right? Action, insights and strategy. We want to make sure that you know how to interpret the data and be able to access the data. Right. So some things that you can do in Alation of sorry is contribute to those KPIs that are so critical. Right. Have them hand the installation and reference them and link them back to your technical data. Right. This requires you to work a little bit with some technical subject matter experts. But then that way in Alation that there is no silos, there is no technical information is here. Business information is here. We want to be able to link the to right. Classifications is a huge one, right? This is something that, that benefits a lot of users to be able to see what's the golden standard, what is raw, what is, you know, critical, what is sensitive. Classifying your data is a great way to contribute to a data-driven culture. As a business user, documenting articles and groups, of course. Sorry, articles and terms. And then I think the biggest one here is consume, involve and provide feedback. Right. If you come into Alation and you're a business user and you're not getting value out of it, speak up. Talk to your data governance folks. Talk to the data catalog owners, because we want you guys to be, reaping the rewards, right? This is not a program just for technical users. We want business users to see the value of a data catalog, and, managing metadata. Right. So please speak up and provide that feedback. Last slide, I promise. And I know I'm running over time, but if if you are someone who is in the position of at the data governance lead or the catalog owner. This slide is for you, right? There is amazing resources in a book. In the Book of Knowledge, I highlighted some of my favorite reads chapter one, chapter 12, and chapter 18. I'm not joking. I genuinely read over those chapters at least at least once a month, because there's so much good information in those that I'm constantly, reading up on them and providing feedback to my customers. Right. But the strategy portion is huge. If if you don't have a vision, a strategy, and a mission in mind, rolling out a catalog and expanding your data, your data driven culture is going to be difficult. So I know we're we're really low on time. I'm going to pause here, but this gives you some additional, key practices that if you are a data governance lead or a catalog owner, you can participate and, and do them to contribute to a data driven culture. Great. Andre. Thank you. This is Deb.