Nintex provides workflow automation software that helps organizations streamline processes and enhance productivity. Its solutions automate repetitive tasks, allowing organizations to remain competitive and agile.
Nintex’s existing cloud data storage and analytics platform wasn’t adapting well to the company’s increasing needs as well as it liked. Several challenges, including flexibility limitations and hurdles regarding data ownership, stood in the way of the organization gaining live views of product telemetry data, as well as information on revenue trends, account health, and more. Nintex switched to Databricks to take advantage of its lower cost, improved usability, and advanced data processing capabilities. However, integrating data to Databricks from all their data sources was still a challenge. CData Sync offered a simple yet comprehensive solution.
The challenge: Gaining a comprehensive view of data in real-time
As Nintex’s business grew, they began to face challenges with their data management infrastructure. Their existing solution for business intelligence, data analytics, and data storage proved expensive, straining Nintex’s budget. They were unable to provide stakeholders with a live feed of product performance, slowing down insights into product performance. Nintex needed a more cost-effective and integrated solution to better manage their data and improve insights.
Nintex’s research and development (R&D) team began using Databricks to bring in all the big data feeds from their products, which was effective, but left the organization with multiple sources of truth. To get a comprehensive view of product sales by region, renewals by subscription package, product churn by account tenure, and more, Nintex needed a single source of truth for all the data across their tech stack.
But Databricks didn’t natively integrate with Salesforce and NetSuite – a major roadblock for Siddarth Ranganathan, Nintex Sr. Director of Data Science, BI & Analytics, to fully adopt Databricks for data storage and reporting needs across the company.
“The one thing that Databricks hadn't solved yet was the ability to connect to different SaaS systems and to bring the data in, which is where CData comes in.”
– Siddarth Ranganathan, Senior Director of Data Science, BI & Analytics, Nintex
That’s when Nintex turned to CData. CData Sync offered a stable and reliable data integration and replication platform, boosting Databricks’ capabilities to seamlessly connect to the platform from unsupported sources.
The solution: Collaboration and connectivity with CData
CData Sync turned out to be exactly what Nintex needed to elevate Databricks’ functionality. With its robust data integration capabilities, Sync provided fast and reliable connectivity, allowing Nintex to replicate data from Salesforce and NetSuite along with other data sources into Databricks. The data fed into Databricks through Sync was accurate, detailed, reliable, and processed quickly for real-time analytics.
Armed with comprehensive product and account data within Databricks, Siddarth’s team used Databricks Notebooks to apply custom business logic and further improve their data processing workflows. Nintex is now able to produce reports across 10x more dimensions than they were previously. They can ‘slice and dice’ data to analyze annual recurring revenue (ARR), understand product sales by region, measure renewals business, forecast pricing trends, and much more. These reporting processes used to be severely limited, taking two analysts about 15 days of manual work to complete. Now, analysts can pull highly customized reports in just six minutes.
“We not only save time every week, but the number of dimensions of insights has increased dramatically – not to mention the accuracy of those insights now that finance isn’t manually calculating ARR every month."
– Siddarth Ranganathan, Senior Director of Data Science, BI & Analytics, Nintex
Nintex worked directly with CData to overcome the integration challenges that Databricks alone couldn’t solve. The result was a comprehensive and efficient end-to-end data management solution that met all their needs.
The outcome: Dramatic cost and time savings with a bonus
The collaboration between Databricks and CData transformed Nintex's data management and analytics processes. By adopting CData Sync, Nintex can now seamlessly replicate data from Salesforce, NetSuite, and more into Databricks – paving the way for real-time analytics, machine learning initiatives, and improved business outcomes.
The financial impact was immediate and significant. By switching to Databricks, Nintex saved over 30% compared to the previous solution. These substantial cost savings allowed Nintex to allocate resources more strategically, driving further innovation and growth. The drastic reduction in technical resources needed and processing time allowed Siddarth’s team to shift their focus from routine data tasks to more value-added activities, fostering a culture of innovation and enhancing overall productivity.
“We now get the most accurate depiction of annual recurring revenue run rate, and slice and dice data in many different ways to yield insights on-demand. Ultimately, it’s a reliable measure of the business that we can now take action against.”
– Siddarth Ranganathan, Senior Director of Data Science, BI & Analytics, Nintex
With Databricks and Sync, Siddarth and his team dig deeper into their data than ever before. Nintex can now analyze business performance across more dimensions to uncover trends and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented accuracy. This leads to better forecasting, improved strategic planning, and a stronger competitive edge in the market. Perhaps most importantly, Databricks and CData Sync allows Nintex to own the data within their storage accounts, permitting complete control and flexibility.
Derive business insights from your tech stack with CData Sync
CData allows organizations of any size to connect their entire data stack, providing timely, accurate information based in real-time data. CData Sync provides data integration pipelines from any source to any application – in the cloud or on-premises. Want to test it out? Get a 30-day free trial today.
