Data Platform Assessment and Architecture Consulting

The services are targeted for enterprises with scalable data platforms that enable the unification and integration of data across the digital ecosystem for digital extensibility, business scalability, agility, and responsiveness.

Data Platform Consulting Program is a prerequisite for a Data modernization implementation program and would be conducted as a gated discovery workshop that includes assessment, fitment, and scoping phases.

Assessment Services:

The assessment phase would focus on collating information and understanding the current business process, the connecting data, and application landscape, to ascertain the completeness of data, the maturity of the data landscape.

The key activities of the assessment phase would include –

Discovery and Deep Dive Sessions
- Understand Vision & Agenda
  - Business model & strategy
  - Digital Agenda
- Process and Data Framework
  - Current business processes, process workflows
  - Process and Data Integrations
  - Tool and Technology Details
  - Environment and Infrastructure details
- Data Ecosystem
  - Data Sources, Data Elements, Data Flows, Data Formats & Data Stores
  - Data Infrastructure
  - Data Flow Model - Data Capture, Data Semantics
  - Data Capture Templates or Systems – Manual and Automation Modes
  - Data compatibility – structured and unstructured data
  - Data digitization and automation levels
Data Landscape Maturity Assessment
- Ascertain Data Completeness w.r.t Business processes including the level of coupling between business applications and externally interfacing systems.
- Identify Process vs. Data Gaps
- Identify Data Flow Gaps & Anomalies
- Ascertain Data Readiness against digital agenda, business process up scaling, and automation

Sonata would use its standard templates and assessment framework as part of the workshops to accelerate the information collation and assessment process.

Fitment:

The fitment phase would focus on ascertaining the readiness of the ecosystem for upscaling and modernization primarily at the data level, with supporting application and infrastructure.

The key activities of the fitment phase would include –

Maturity Levels and Benchmarking
- Industry Trends Mapping
- Industry Solutions Benchmarking focus on Data Analytics, Insights and Intelligent Data Applications
- Data Solution Recommendations
Landscape Maturity Assessment
- Assess ecosystem readiness and scale to support the implementation of Data Platform
- Assess the data maturity for implementation of data platform
- Assess digitization ration of the process to support data digitalization
- Benchmarks industry best practices for data digitization and modernization
Co-creation of Platform Ecosystem & Design Thinking
- In conjunction with the business teams, co-create the platform ecosystem, models, and data platforms relevant to the enterprise.
- Data Exploration exercise (Business, Domain, Data elements)
  - Existing infrastructure
  - Identify all internal & potential external data sources
- Ideation Process & Techniques (Storyboarding, Brainstorming)
- Business Data Consumer (Business Groups or Functions) Journey
- Goal alignment with Platformation
Co-creation and Visualization of Platform and Data Model
- In conjunction with the business teams, co-create the logical data model focusing on data ingestion from different platforms, transformation & analysis
Outline Data Strategy
- High level view of the Data Platform Architecture, Data Elements, Data Sources, Access Levels
- Detailed Technical Considerations – Security, Scalability, Integration
- Implementation plan and timeline
Platform Fitment and Architecture Recommendations
- Application and Data Ecosystem Analysis against 18-point Data Platform Framework
  - Platform Readiness of the Landscape and individual entities
  - Process digitization levels ( full or partial manual processes)
  - Data digitization levels
- Business, data, and technology assessment relevant to the platform and digital processes

Scoping & Articulation

The scoping phase would focus on the finalization of the service scope, priorities, and timelines together by Sonata and the client team.

The activities in this phase would focus on identifying all the involved source systems and their versions, 3rd party systems, visualization target audience, and visualization concepts & objectives.

The key activities of the scoping phase include -

Business Case for Pilot Implementation
- Define business goals that are expected from the insights derived from data modernization
- Identify and elucidate primary business use case to start with
- Conduct feasibility of business use case including the availability of data
- Ensure a defined data governance framework to adequately protect information privacy and security
- Connect stakeholders including senior management as well as users directly linked with the use case
Proof of Concept Implementation
- Execute a proof of concept around the primary business use case (PoC)
- Upon validation of PoC, assess choice of tools/technologies and sizing of infrastructure required
- Monitor adoption of pilot platform implementation
Digital Business Processes Definition
- Create a Digital Business Process library for the enterprise along with the `As Is – To Be’ gap analysis (business). Based on the same, future business processes and Marchitecture are generated
- Digitization of data for digitized business processes
Data Platform Definition and Roadmap
- Platform Characteristics: A 16-point framework is applied to identify relevant platform characteristics to the `To-Be’ Platform architecture. Further data characteristics are identified using the framework.
- Platformation Roadmap & Proposal: Recommendation for platform roadmap and implementation priority are outlined:
  - Implementation priority based on quick adoption, rollouts to business groups, enterprise digital agenda timelines
  - Tool Evaluation and Finalization
  - Technology adoption – data, cloud, platform engineering, and apps scope
  - Implementation proposal / business case covering execution plan, budgets, timelines etc.
- Implementation - Execution Approach
  - The execution methodology is provided
    - Provide estimates and a baselined working schedule for the entire implementation
    - Comprehensive plans for pilots, programs, and projects are created and technology decisions for `build and buy’ are arrived at.
    - Platformation KPIs are continually measured and governed to ensure platform development and extensions, deployment, and management.

Data Platform Assessment and Architecture Consulting