Why the Market Research sector is taking note of Databricks Data Lakehouse.

Overcoming Market Research Challenges

For Market Research agencies, Organisations and Brands exploring insights across markets and customers, the traditional research model of bidding for a blend of large-scale qualitative and quantitative data collection processes is losing appeal to a more value-driven, granular, real-time targeted approach to understanding consumer behaviour, more regular insights engagement and more agile responses to market changes.

Projects are now more focussed on the need to blend the vast amounts of data coming from multiple media and event sources, insights and near-live reporting from customer engagements throughout the product or brand lifecycle. The emphasis is on quick answers rather than timed processes; on research from low-cost automated self-service projects, or in-app and social media community engagements. These new methods have been adapted by a more democratised research community, where information is pouring in from multiple sources and touch points within organisations, and not just through the traditional channels of Market Research projects.

With this evolution there are new challenges.  Marketing is becoming more personalised, but conversely privacy needs are driving new methods to track customers in a cookie-less digital world. Another driving force challenging the sector is the huge amount of data that is being collected, and how this can be suitably prepared and analysed from the multiple diverse sources of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that is being collected and stored.

For over a decade, Ardent have been helping Market Research agencies to meet new technological challenges with agile and scalable solutions, built to endure vast amounts of Big Data, and tailored to the specific needs of each client.

Among the revolutionary solutions transforming Market Research in recent years is Data Warehousing These services are a form of data management, which are designed to enable and support Business Intelligence (BI) activities such as data engineering, analytics, and being a central repository for information to be analysed and actioned for better data-driven decision making in business.

One powerful solution that has garnered significant attention is Databricks Data Lakehouse. In this blog, we'll explore why Market Research agencies should take note of this powerful platform and how it empowers them to unlock unparalleled insights and achieve business success.

Unified analytics deliver speedy comprehensive insights

Databricks combines out-of-the-box tools such as BI analytics, real-time streaming, and AI/ML with traditional data warehousing and low-latency query processing.

Companies want more immersive detailed data as market research pours in from many sources across the organisation, recording transactional and production data, audio visual content, social media feeds, website activity and sales feedback from customers. Much of this information is often designed to support specific decisions or projects, subsequently siloed. Handling and managing these diverse data sources can be a daunting task, diverting valuable time and resources away from the core research process and making it difficult to derive actionable insights from traditional data management systems.

This data needs to be captured, cleaned, aggregated, and made accessible to the analytics tools. Databricks has responded with an out-of-the-box solution that offers end-to-end data management and BI analysis. The platform is a multi-cloud open-source solution that integrates raw and processed data lake and data warehouse infrastructures into one seamless solution overlaying streaming data with campaign or customer data, and other profiling data sources. Organisations can use Databricks to perform ETL, processes, data science and data warehousing analytics directly from a single platform across one or more multiple clouds simultaneously.

Better curation of multiple structured and unstructured datasets in one place not only saves time and resources but also enhances the overall research quality driving data-driven decisions that better identify and resonate with their customers.

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"As the demand for data-monetisation and insights continues to soar across industries, we at Ardent recommend Databricks as a dependable tool for reporting and insights.

Databricks provides a unified data platform that can transform the way market research agencies operate, enhance efficiencies, scalability, and improve the depth of insights that can be provided. In today's business environment, time is of the essence whilst making effective business decisions. The right decision can be made with the right data at the right time. Databricks offers just that.

Furthermore, Databricks offers a move beyond static reports, offering interactive dashboards and real-time insights with role-based access control, identity management, and data encryption for high level of data protection. Databricks is an investment that will provide an excellent return."

Ashish Raina, CEO

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Providing real-time data processing for timely insights

The quantity and quantity of streaming data is growing exponentially and agencies are now faced with the challenge of acquiring, processing, and making use of streaming data effectively. Databricks built-in streaming capabilities enables near real-time data processing and allows agencies to make timely decisions, optimise research campaigns, respond quickly to emerging trends in a cost-effective manner, and focus on extracting valuable insights rather than grappling with data logistics.

The speed of business is getting faster, answers are required more quickly, and commercial advantage gained by being the quickest to market with new insights delivered at a lightning-fast pace. Read how Ardent increased data reporting time by up to 80% deploying Databricks for a media broadcasters research team

Ardent supports this infrastructure with a 24/7 monitoring service that deploys off-the-shelf state-of-the-art monitoring software with our own tailored dashboards for manual and automated observation ensuring a robust and secure flow of your mission-critical data at all times is not interrupted by data drop-outs, gaps and downtime.

Enabling corporate-wide Cross-department Collaboration

Often research is conducted across disparate teams or geographical locations. Databricks serves as a centralised data platform where different departments can access and work with data collaboratively, sharing datasets, code, and insights easily.

The platform also provides granular control over data sharing and permissions, ensuring that cross-departmental collaboration can be facilitated while maintaining data security and privacy.

Collaborative notebooks in Databricks enable multiple users, including data scientists, analysts, and researchers to work together on the same data analysis or machine learning projects. Additionally, Databricks integrates with other collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, allowing teams to communicate, share updates, and discuss findings easily. By promoting effective communication and documentation, Databricks fosters seamless collaboration, knowledge sharing, and encourages a culture of teamwork and transparency across the organisation.

Data Governance and Standards are crucial aspects of successful data management. With Databricks, organisations can establish data governance policies and standards to maintain data integrity and adherence to compliance regulations, ensuring that data is handled consistently across departments, reducing confusion and improving the quality of analyses and insights.

Creating valuable insights from Data exploration

AI is already being used in areas like panel management, the coding of open-ended comments, speech-to-text translation for video, sentiment analysis, and chatbots.

Databricks provides powerful data exploration tools enabling sophisticated data analysis and ML capabilities with Apache Spark and popular ML frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch.

Ardent works with research organisations to optimise data cleaning, routing, management and monitoring of data pipelines in Databricks so that Analysts can delve deep into the data and uncover hidden patterns, sentiments, trends and decode consumer preferences without worrying about the data infrastructure that hosts the Analytics tools.

Cost-efficient Scalability

Traditional data warehouses can be costly to scale, especially for agencies dealing with exponential data growth. Databricks offers a cost-efficient solution that scales seamlessly to accommodate increasing data volumes, ensuring that media and marketing agencies can continue to derive insights without being held back by infrastructure limitations.

The platform's Auto-Scaling feature automatically scales the compute resources up or down based on the workload demand, ensuring that agencies only pay for the resources they need at any given time. This helps avoid over-provisioning and optimises cost efficiency.

Additionally, Databricks offers a serverless option called Databricks Runtime for ML (Machine Learning) and Databricks Runtime for SQL Analytics. With serverless compute, agencies don't need to manage the underlying infrastructure, and Databricks handles scaling automatically, reducing operational costs.

The platform also allows agencies to choose from a range of instance types with different compute and memory configurations. By selecting the most appropriate instance types based on their workloads, agencies can avoid overprovisioning and optimise resource utilisation.

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"Databricks revolutionises the landscape for media and market research by effortlessly surmounting a longstanding challenge—eliminating the need for separate compute environments dedicated to various workloads and processes. With its integrated dashboard and alert features, Databricks obviates the necessity of adopting additional tools for visualisation and alerting, streamlining operations and magnifying efficiency"

Laxman Amrale, AVP Technology and Solutions

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Databricks Solution Accelerators

One of the issues with new technologies is how they are adapted to deal with issues relating to specific markets, and deal with specific business problems. Databricks has introduced a series of Vertical Market integrator tools and solutions accelerators to streamline data management for the Advertising, Media and Marketing sectors and these tools relate highly to the specific needs of Market Researchers. The Advertising Intelligence solution accelerators consist of Customer Segmentation, Multi-touch Attribution, and Sales Forecasting.

The accelerators act as a bridge between strategic business goals and technological implementation, bolstering campaign outcomes and informed decision-making. One remarkable feature of Databricks I find is its ability to seamlessly integrate new data sources into the existing schema, making it effortless to incorporate new research tactics into the model.

Alternatives to Databricks

Databricks for data warehousing is not the only option, other popular alternatives offering a similar service (either as a data warehouse or a data lake) include:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) – This platform is considered to require more technical knowledge than Databricks, but it also has an enormous selection of services and functionality, which also allows the platform to integrate with different cloud-based programs.

Microsoft Azure – Azure has many different elements, and the Azure Synapse program is comparable in that it integrates analytical services for data warehousing and operating on a single platform. The Azure service is backed up by a large knowledge base, scalable functionality, and also allows for more complex products to be created at scale.

Ardent has a wealth of experience providing tailored data management solutions using all the main Data Warehouse services available and can use this to align to your specific needs, aligning work processes and building Apps to integrate services into the Data management infrastructure.

We can help you evaluate the best solution whether this is Databricks, Azure, Amazon Redshift or Snowflake

Ardents' team of highly skilled data engineers are proficient in world-leading data technologies and can make recommendations based on your unique needs and requirements. Whether you have a preferred tech stack or want expert guidance on the technologies right for your data and business, we can help

In Summary

Databricks Data Lakehouse has emerged as a ground-breaking platform that caters perfectly to the data-intensive needs of Market Research agencies. By unifying analytics, streamlining data management, providing real-time processing, and enabling advanced analytics, it becomes a valuable tool in the quest to outpace competitors and make informed, data-driven decisions. As the data landscape continues to evolve, harnessing the power of Databricks and other Data Warehouse solutions is vital to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive.

For more information about implementing or optimising your Data warehouse solution, please contact Adam Nichols on 07459 798 870 or by email adam.nichols@ardentisys.com