Atlan Case Studies Agile Sprints and Modern Data Platform: TechStyle's Transformation Journey

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	Agile Sprints and Modern Data Platform: TechStyle's Transformation Journey Atlan

Agile Sprints and Modern Data Platform: TechStyle's Transformation Journey

Atlan

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries	Buildings E-Commerce
Applicable Functions	Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases	Picking, Sorting & Positioning Time Sensitive Networking
Services	Data Science Services System Integration
Challenge	TechStyle, a fashion retailer with a portfolio of five brands, faced a significant challenge in early 2020. The company, which has built its business model around embedding data across its operations, decided to overhaul its common systems and roll out a new data warehouse. This was a daunting task due to legacy backends, a relatively new team, and a sudden shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. TechStyle uses a 'hub-and-spoke analytics model', where each brand has its own embedded Analytics Team, and the Data Platforms Team creates and manages common data systems. However, the company had been struggling with making data discoverable and understandable to everyone, not just long-time team members. The documentation for their systems was often limited or non-existent, and the growth of data sources that weren’t owned by TechStyle’s central data team added to the confusion and complexity. The challenge was further compounded when the company had to shift to remote work, disrupting the informal information flow that worked naturally in the office. Read More
About Customer	Founded in 2010, TechStyle Fashion Group is a fashion retailer with a portfolio of five brands — Fabletics, Savage X Fenty, JustFab, FabKids, and ShoeDazzle. By integrating data science and personalization with a membership model, the company has grown to become one of the world’s largest membership-based fashion companies, boasting 5.5 million members and over $750 million in annual revenue. TechStyle has built its business model around embedding data across its operations, offering personalized customer experiences on its website, digital supply chains rooted in predictive analytics, and warehouses run on IoT devices. Each brand within TechStyle has its own embedded Analytics Team, and the Data Platforms Team creates and manages common data systems. Read More
Solution	To tackle these challenges, TechStyle decided to move its systems to a Snowflake data warehouse and implement Atlan, a unified data workspace. The company opted for an ELT style of data engineering, where they load the data as-is from the source. Once the raw data is loaded, TechStyle uses a hybrid approach to model whatever needs to be modeled and leave the rest untouched. The company also prioritized data documentation from the beginning of the project. They integrated Atlan with their new modern data stack — Snowflake, Tableau, Apache Airflow, and Git — and started building a knowledge management process as part of the rollout of the new data warehouse. TechStyle used an iterative process to build their documentation from scratch. They started with a minimum viable product (MVP), tested a few cases, learned from the results, and carried out a series of sprints to continue building new documentation for other tables and columns in the EDW, all while refining the documentation standards. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Buildings

E-Commerce

Applicable Functions

Warehouse & Inventory Management

Use Cases

Picking, Sorting & Positioning

Time Sensitive Networking

Services

Data Science Services

System Integration

Challenge

TechStyle, a fashion retailer with a portfolio of five brands, faced a significant challenge in early 2020. The company, which has built its business model around embedding data across its operations, decided to overhaul its common systems and roll out a new data warehouse. This was a daunting task due to legacy backends, a relatively new team, and a sudden shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. TechStyle uses a 'hub-and-spoke analytics model', where each brand has its own embedded Analytics Team, and the Data Platforms Team creates and manages common data systems. However, the company had been struggling with making data discoverable and understandable to everyone, not just long-time team members. The documentation for their systems was often limited or non-existent, and the growth of data sources that weren’t owned by TechStyle’s central data team added to the confusion and complexity. The challenge was further compounded when the company had to shift to remote work, disrupting the informal information flow that worked naturally in the office.

About Customer

Founded in 2010, TechStyle Fashion Group is a fashion retailer with a portfolio of five brands — Fabletics, Savage X Fenty, JustFab, FabKids, and ShoeDazzle. By integrating data science and personalization with a membership model, the company has grown to become one of the world’s largest membership-based fashion companies, boasting 5.5 million members and over $750 million in annual revenue. TechStyle has built its business model around embedding data across its operations, offering personalized customer experiences on its website, digital supply chains rooted in predictive analytics, and warehouses run on IoT devices. Each brand within TechStyle has its own embedded Analytics Team, and the Data Platforms Team creates and manages common data systems.

Solution

To tackle these challenges, TechStyle decided to move its systems to a Snowflake data warehouse and implement Atlan, a unified data workspace. The company opted for an ELT style of data engineering, where they load the data as-is from the source. Once the raw data is loaded, TechStyle uses a hybrid approach to model whatever needs to be modeled and leave the rest untouched. The company also prioritized data documentation from the beginning of the project. They integrated Atlan with their new modern data stack — Snowflake, Tableau, Apache Airflow, and Git — and started building a knowledge management process as part of the rollout of the new data warehouse. TechStyle used an iterative process to build their documentation from scratch. They started with a minimum viable product (MVP), tested a few cases, learned from the results, and carried out a series of sprints to continue building new documentation for other tables and columns in the EDW, all while refining the documentation standards.

Impact #1	The implementation of Atlan and the new data warehouse has significantly improved TechStyle's data documentation and visibility. The company has been able to create a replicable documentation process through agile, iterative experimentation. They started with one use case as their initial prototype on Atlan and used their learnings to quickly create and validate new company-wide documentation standards. The team also used Agile sprints to quickly experiment, document, and carry learnings forward, making documentation part of everyday work. This has helped to build a culture around data documentation at TechStyle. The rollout of the new data warehouse and the improved documentation process has provided a valuable opportunity for the company to create a shared workspace where data and business alike, across different teams or brands, can work together seamlessly to tackle any business problem.

Impact #1

The implementation of Atlan and the new data warehouse has significantly improved TechStyle's data documentation and visibility. The company has been able to create a replicable documentation process through agile, iterative experimentation. They started with one use case as their initial prototype on Atlan and used their learnings to quickly create and validate new company-wide documentation standards. The team also used Agile sprints to quickly experiment, document, and carry learnings forward, making documentation part of everyday work. This has helped to build a culture around data documentation at TechStyle. The rollout of the new data warehouse and the improved documentation process has provided a valuable opportunity for the company to create a shared workspace where data and business alike, across different teams or brands, can work together seamlessly to tackle any business problem.

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Overview

Agile Sprints and Modern Data Platform: TechStyle's Transformation Journey

Operational Impact