Your business data is a gold mine you may not be taking full advantage of.
As a business grows in both size and complexity, putting the vast reams of data you've acquired to good use becomes its own business challenge. Translating the data you have into clear insights and visuals your teams can parse is an important step in the process.
That's where Looker, Google Cloud's business intelligence tool, comes in.
Why Use Looker?
Looker is an enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform built on Google's cloud infrastructure that uses AI technology to help businesses get more out of their data.
Looker enables you to:
- Translate your data into a semantic layer, so employees of various skill levels can start making use of it
- Create interactive dashboards that update in real time, providing data visualizations that help internal teams or customers understand your data more clearly
- Embed custom dashboards into other applications, so users can access them within tools they already use regularly
- Connect Looker with all your other data tools via APIs (application programming interfaces)
- Gain insights from your data via natural language queries (e.g. conversational analytics)
In short, Looker is a powerful tool designed for data engineers and analysts that can enable your organization to make more data-driven decisions, or provide a basis for adding sophisticated data visualization features to your products.
The Internal Story: How Promevo Uses Looker
Promevo is all about Google. The Google ecosystem is where our expertise is focused and getting the most out of Google products is the value we offer to clients.
Nonetheless, when considering what BI platform to invest in, we did consider multiple options just to make sure we were selecting the best tool for our needs.
After evaluating a few possibilities, Looker was the clear winner. And the results back that decision up. At Promevo, we now use Looker for two valuable internal uses:
- To improve and streamline our internal processes
- To enhance our product and service offerings for customers
How We Use Looker Internally
Before incorporating Looker into our internal processes, Promevo's finance team spent their days mired in spreadsheets. Tasks like reconciling SKUs and payment terms were slow, messy, and detached from the current data — all of which increased the risk of errors.
Because Looker connects seamlessly to the Google Cloud data suite, Promevo was able to create one centralized, up-to-date view of all the company's data. Having a single source of truth connected to Looker's data visualization capabilities was a game changer.
In our finance department especially, the difference is profound. Common processes like managing subscriptions, tracking SKUs, and reconciling payment terms are now all automated and centralized.
The changes go beyond finance though. Employees across the organization have integrated Looker tools into how they work. Anyone who can benefit from analytics (which is everyone) has gained better access to the data they need to do their jobs well.
How Looker Adds Value for Our Customers
Using Looker didn't just help Promevo streamline internal operations, it also introduced possibilities to create a better experience for customers.
In addition to consulting services, Promevo manages a Google Workspace management product, gPanel. The product let clients export their Workspace data to Sheets, but customers were requesting advanced options for gaining more depth and flexibility from their analytics.
Promevo used Looker to create a new feature to deliver on that request: Promevo Insights. Promevo Insights is a new feature available in gPanel Enterprise that captures new analytics from within an organization's Google Cloud environment every day, then applies AI technology to create summaries and recommendations based on that data.
Enterprise customers now have a better way to access real-time intelligence about their Google Cloud Platform environment, and act on it faster.
The Looker Difference
Between these two use cases, Looker has provided significant value to Promevo. Centralizing data within Looker helped our company recapture $1.2 million in annual revenue. And using Looker to power a premium feature in gPanel has led to meaningful upsell opportunities.
All of that was accomplished with minimal buildout costs. And while we estimate that Promevo Insights would have taken over a year to build in another BI product, with Looker, it only took a matter of months.
To reiterate, Looker has helped us:
- Improve efficiency and reduce errors internally, leading to lower costs
- Save money through low buildout costs
- See a faster time-to-value
- Provide greater value to customers, boosting customer satisfaction and increasing upsells
The Advisory Pivot: How Promevo Helps Customers Use Looker
Promevo's experience using Looker internally has an additional benefit: as a company that provides consulting, technical support, and technical implementation for Google products, everything we've learned about Looker can benefit our clients.
Many organizations recognize they need a powerful BI product, but worry that Looker may have too much of a learning curve to successfully implement for their own purposes. That's where an experienced partner can make the difference.
Promevo is well situated to help clients benefit from Looker in a few different ways.
Analytics as a Service
Promevo uses Looker Embedded to create premium visualization services for customers. We can build custom dashboards that pull in relevant first-party and third-party data to help organizations see their analytics in a new light.
Better data visualizations can help organizations forecast demand more accurately, track ROI (return on investment) in real time, and make business decisions driven by data.
Strategy Consulting
Sometimes the first problem to solve is how best to even use a tool like Looker. Promevo can help clients think through the most valuable use cases for your organization and illuminate the specific kinds of issues Looker can help you address.
For organizations already using Looker, Promevo can also help you optimize or refactor your current Looker and LookML projects to help you get more out of them or fix current issues.
Implementation or Migration
Getting started is often the hardest part, and Promevo can help you get everything set up in the way you need to start getting value from Looker.
If you're using another BI platform like Power BI or Tableau, but considering a move, we can help with the transition to Looker.
Application Development
We can also help clients build out custom data applications that take advantage of Looker's functionality for the specific use cases your company needs.
Whether it's a data application for your internal teams to use or one that provides additional value to your customers (thus helping you boost profits), we can help make your app idea into a reality.
Promevo’s Data Prowess: Why Hire Us to Help You Use Looker (or Use It Better)
Promevo are certified Google experts, which includes deep expertise in Google Cloud and Looker. We can (and have) helped businesses develop a strong data strategy that addresses your primary needs, as well as helping you design the custom BI solution to enact that strategy.
Examples of Promevo in Action
Here are a few of the projects we've helped other clients with.
Google Cloud Data Migration for NKY Health
Businesses often recognize when a solution isn't working for them, but taking the step of transitioning to a new product can be overwhelming. NKY Health was dependent on a legacy VMWare network setup and storage system that was costing them more than they bargained for, involved significant maintenance demands, and wasn't providing the level of security they needed for compliance.
Promevo worked with the company to first evaluate whether Google Cloud was the best option for them by providing a thorough Proof of Concept. Once the NKY Health team was convinced, we then helped them through the process of making the switch. As a result, they've saved money, improved security, reduced maintenance needs, and set up a system that allows for more flexibility over time.
Improved Data Management for Trinity Home Advisors
A data analyst at home warranty provider, Trinity Home Advisors, struggled to move data from the company's CRM (customer relationship management software) to Google Sheets through an API. What should have been a simple task was stymied by the volume of data the API connector could handle.
Promevo didn't just step in to solve the problem, our experts worked closely with him to both identify the best solution (a combo of BigQuery and Google Cloud) and provide the education needed to make sure the analyst learned everything he needed to know to handle the process successfully moving forward.
Providing education is one of the skills Promevo is quick to provide to clients wanting to learn. We don't just complete projects for you (unless that's your preference), we help make sure employees learn everything they need for success moving forward.
Looker License Management for a Retail Leader
While a lot of our data-focused projects involve more technical expertise, we can also help clients with the process of managing their licenses more effectively. A leading retailer we worked with was reliant on Looker to deliver BI and data analytics services and struggled to keep the right number of licenses to do the work required.
We not only helped them secure the right number and tier of license to keep performing business-critical services, but also helped negotiate favorable terms to ensure reasonable pricing.
Ways Promevo Can Help
Promevo has a range of offerings related to Looker and data management. We're familiar with many of the main BI and data analytics products available in the space, including:
- Dataflow/Apache Beam
- Datafusion
- Firestore/Datastore
- BigQuery
- Dataform
- Looker Studio
- Vertex AI
- Pub/Sub
In addition to the use cases explored above, we can help businesses use Looker to develop generative AI applications that let your team gain data-based insights using conversational language. Instead of having to parse charts and graphs, they can ask direct questions and get answers based on the data in your warehouse.
We can also help you design custom dashboards that make analytics more accessible to non-technical audiences like marketers or your customer base. Your internal teams can gain valuable insights that help them make more effective decisions. And you can potentially increase the value of your products or services by offering customers premium analytics that help them improve business operations.
Whatever your specific needs are, Promevo is committed to working closely with customers to develop the right strategy and technical solutions that meet them. Get in touch, and let's get started.
