"I was looking for a simpler tool than a traditional ETL, which would enable me to concentrate on the meaning of the data and its formats, match data sets easily, and provide flexibility for upgrading. In a way, it's a tool for managing data throughout its entire lifecycle. Julien Glauzy, Data Administrator at the Information Systems and Telecommunications Department of the Greater Nancy Metropolis.
To meet the demands of its employees, the Metropole Grand Nancy is looking to optimize data sharing. The aim is to gain a global view of data, improve knowledge and quality, and unify the information systems from which they originate, in order to improve efficiency and service quality.
What were the issues for Grand Nancy?
What are the contributions of Tale of Data? What were the reasons for the choice?
Key points for the Metropole of Greater Nancy
- Improve the quality of reference data - and facilitate its sharing with business units and applications - to best meet internal demands; create new, high value-added services for the communities that make up the metropolis; - Define a framework for data management, in conjunction with project managers and business referents, in order to gain a better understanding of data, and ensure its dissemination, consistency and reliability. For example, define the life cycle of data to be controlled; the principles of creation, storage, deletion, reliability... - Meet the regulatory requirements of the RGPD and the Metropolitan Security level for electronic data; - Build an infocenter, with a Big data collection logic, enabling the production of long-term strategic steering indicators.
Presentation of the Metropolis of Greater Nancy
The metropolis is a territory of 256,000 inhabitants, comprising 20 communes. It is located in the Grand Est region, at the heart of the Lorraine corridor, and includes the towns and conurbations of Thionville, Metz, Nancy and Épinal, with a total population of 1.4 million. The Grand Nancy Metropolis has a number of key missions in the areas of economic development; transport and mobility; universities and research; new information and communication technologies; housing and solidarity; regional development, mobility and the environment; and major cultural, sports and leisure facilities.
The challenges of Greater Nancy
The number of different information systems - 20, i.e. 1 per municipality, and the independence of these systems - calls for a specific decision-making strategy. All this while meeting regulatory requirements in terms of data protection, security and archiving. "I was looking for a tool that was simpler than a traditional ETL, that would enable me to concentrate on the meaning of the data, their formats, match data sets easily, and provide flexibility for evolution. In a way, it's a tool for managing data throughout its lifecycle. says Julien Glauzy, Data Administrator at the Information Systems and Telecommunications Department of the Greater Nancy Metropolis.
Why did the Metropolis of Greater Nancy choose Tale of Data?
The solution immediately stood out for its powerful functionality and flexibility, enabling data to be processed for decision-making purposes. "I saw that we could achieve "quick wins" and sometimes solve very old problems. The tool very quickly provides an exhaustive approach to a set of data from a database or file.
Data exploration and formatting are much faster than with Excel functions or an ETL. What's more, our approach to data means that we concentrate fully on the format, meaning and data sets, rather than on the technical side, which saves time," explains Julien Glauzy. The software's interface also makes it easy to re-read a data "flow", a bit like a book, so that you can easily find what you've done to the data (transformation, formatting, mixing, etc.). "Once again, I save time, and it's easier to share the process and results," comments Julien Glauzy. In Tale of Data, the repository logic exists - so it's possible to make join and combination strategies between numerous repositories, which you can't do with SQL. Working with repository logic is called Data Mesh*. This enables us to move from a centralized data infrastructure (data warehouse, data lake) managed by a single team to a distributed data organization (supplier/consumer/repository logic), which is what Grand Nancy does.
What are the benefits?
Tale of Data makes it possible to respond quickly to requests. "There's a logic - among others - of data provider and consumer, so I have to deliver the requested service while making good use of the data", says Julien Glauzy. testifies Julien Glauzy.
One of the key benefits of the solution lies in the automation of linking and reconciliation processes. "Rather than having data in the IS and building a data warehouse that corresponds to a single use, we build repositories by theme. When a request comes in, we combine the repositories we need from ready, already formatted repositories. It's faster and extremely flexible", says Julien Glauzy. says Julien Glauzy.
Over and above one-off requests, and thanks to data that can be taken from different repositories - always ensuring that they are fresh and RGPD-compliant - Julien Glauzy provides the IT Service Center with strategic steering indicators to improve the quality of services rendered.
Tale of Data achieves at least 95% connectivity between data from different repositories, which is impossible with databases. Thanks to the power of AI, the solution detects, for example, what is a name or not - recognition to within two letters or in full text - but also detects thousands of other data items such as addresses, telephone numbers, SIREN numbers, ..... Tale of Data lets you see what's in the fields, and alerts you to anything that's not properly formatted. "When you're working with millions of lines, it saves you an infinite amount of time," says Julien Glauzy.
"In the end, I recommend Tale of Data for data mining, semantics, formatting, data combination and AI. I can't find it anywhere else, in any ETL," concludes Julien Glauzy.
To find out more about how Tale of Data applies the Data Mesh concept to transform data management and deliver strategic insights, visit our page dedicated to. "Data Mesh" page or read our in-depth article on the subject "The Data Mesh: a new approach to organizing and exploiting data".
* concept proposed by Zhamak Delghani in 2019