The Medallion Architecture: A Structured Approach to Business Data
Understanding your business's data is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. If you've got all the pieces and know where they fit, you get a clear picture. This is where the Medallion Data Model comes in. Think of it as a simple guide to organizing your business data, from its raw form to a polished, analysis-ready state.
Why It's Useful:
Just like you wouldn't use raw materials to build a house, you wouldn't use unprocessed data to make business decisions. The Medallion Model helps turn raw data into useful information, creating a solid foundation for your business decisions.
Building with Order Data Using the Medallion Model:
1. Bronze Layer - The Starting Point:
Orders: These are just basic details of each sale: when it happened, what was bought, and how much was spent.
Customers: Here, you've got names, maybe some addresses, but they might not all be written the same way.
Opportunities: This is a list of possible sales or leads. It's useful, but might be a bit all over the place.
2. Silver Layer - Getting Things in Order:
Blended Data: Now, we start connecting the dots. We link orders to customers. This gives a better idea of who's buying what.
Opportunities get a look in too. By connecting them with customers, we can see which possible sales turned into real ones.
Standardization: This is where we make sure everything looks and reads the same. No more "NY" in one place and "New York" in another.
3. Gold Layer - The Finished Product:
Optimized Order Details: Each order now tells a story. It's not just about what was bought, but also by whom and possibly why.
Ready for Analysis: With everything organized and polished, it's easy to ask questions like:
How many sales happened in a certain area?
Which types of customers buy the most?
Are our ads turning into real sales?
Why Your Business Should Consider It:
Clear Decisions: With gold data, you're making choices based on the best info.
Save Time: Organized data means you spend less time searching and more time doing.
Save Money: Good data means fewer mistakes. And mistakes can be costly.
Trust Your Data: When it's organized, it's reliable. And that means you can trust the decisions you make from it.
Ready for the Future: With a system like this, as your business grows, your data grows with it.
To wrap things up, the Medallion Data Model isn't about reinventing the wheel. It's about giving businesses a clear, simple way to handle their data. In the end, it's about making sure the foundation of your business is as strong as it can be. So, when it comes to making big decisions, you've got all the pieces of the puzzle.