Working with data is an iterative process where trial and error is paramount. Unless you’re dealing with a very simple or neatly structured data set, it’s quite likely you’ll frequently have to change the way you extract, transform and load data to your reporting tools.
“Sorry, you need to upgrade”
How often have you bumped into the situation that you don’t have enough “credits”, “endpoints”, “zips” or “flips” left in your subscription plan and need to upgrade? Or that your monthly allotted consultancy hours have been used up? Personally, it’s one my of my biggest pet peeves and the reason I built our in-house solution: Digital Badger. I was constantly trying to find ways to compress my data, fitting it to more and more complex data structures so that I could connect just one set of data to the tool I was using and not have to upgrade my plan. The result was increasingly complicated data structures that made sense to me on day one, but six months later – when the source structure changed and I had to revisit my setup – got me reverse engineering my own work for hours. (And yes, I take notes.)
Many online ETL platforms are inflexible in the number of integrations they let you create, or are extremely expensive for the flexibility they’re willing to offer. Worst of all, quite a few set up pricing plans almost specifically to force you to upgrade to a more expensive plan just to get your work done!
We don’t charge extra for trial and error
The first versions of Digital Badger would do all the compressing and restructuring automatically so I just needed to tweak a few settings when things changed. A few years down the road Digital Badger has now evolved to a complete ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool. The tool works completely independently from other data integration services in how it extracts source data, transforms it to a new format, and exports it to the required reporting tool.
Today you can simply add and remove new data integrations as often as you like on a given project, and won’t be charged extra for it.
One of the key learnings I wanted to take along with me as I opened Digital Badger up to new clients was that people need to be able to make mistakes, and not be penalized for them. That’s why today you can simply add and remove new data integrations as often as you like on a given project, and won’t be charged extra for it.
Go ahead, add more data!
Data models change over time as surrounding variables evolve and you learn from previous mistakes. So it’s only natural that you would want to add or remove data integrations on your projects as time goes on! We want you to be able to experiment freely with your data and gain real insights.
They way we work is simple: we assume you’ll need a certain amount of data integrations towards a specific project. So we create a project for you for a low flat monthly fee per month (and a one-time setup fee), and then let you add and remove as many data integrations as you like within the project whenever you want!
A project is, for example, a dashboard or a set of dashboards. Or it could be more wholistic and less “deliverable” focussed, for example a project that exports e-commerce data and loads it on an order fulfilment platform. A project should always have a defined goal, but beyond that it’s normal for scopes and approaches to change.
Then you add data to the project. Add as many sources as you like, transform them how you need, and load them wherever you want. You can even load data to multiple places For example: load data in a specific format to a TV screen dashboard and another in yet another format to a PowerBI instance.
We let you add as much data as you like for free. In some cases, however, we may not have an integration module ready for your case, or your integration is very custom to your business. Depending on the situation, in this case we may have to charge a small fee to set up your integration. We’ll inform you before charging anything, and obviously don’t charge anything to scope the integration.
We’re also very flexible on the amount of data being exported! If your final hosting destination is on Amazon Web Services (AWS) you get unlimited data exports. If not we charge a small additional fee for data beyond 25GB of export per month (which, honestly, should really have you covered!).