Data has become an invaluable asset for businesses, offering critical insights to drive strategic decision-making and operational optimization. However, many companies today still struggle to effectively harness and use their data due to challenges such as data silos, lack of discoverability, poor data quality, and a lack of data literacy and analytical capabilities to quickly access and use data across the organization. To address these growing data management challenges, AWS customers are using Amazon DataZone, a data management service that makes it fast and effortless to catalog, discover, share, and govern data stored across AWS, on-premises, and third-party sources. Recognizing the significant potential benefits, HEMA, a renowned Dutch retail brand, decided to implement Amazon DataZone to revolutionize their data governance strategy.
HEMA is a household Dutch retail brand since 1926, providing daily convenience products using unique design. HEMA’s more than 17,000 employees bring exclusive, sustainably designed products in more than 750 stores in the Netherlands but also in Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, and Austria, with webstores available in all these countries. They embarked on a journey in 2018, shifting their e-commerce system to AWS, which allowed developers the freedom to innovate and build software fast using their choice of tools in the AWS Cloud. Five years later, HEMA’s developers use AWS Cloud for everything, from customer-favorite online cake customization to democratizing data for business insights.
1. Initiate Request
A pivotal step in onboarding service teams to Amazon DataZone involves initiating a request to enable data sharing for their service accounts. This request could be from a data producer needing to publish data to the catalog or a data consumer requiring access to data published by another team. By enabling this process, HEMA streamlined their data-sharing mechanism, allowing extensive utilization of their data assets.
When a service team identifies the need to either share their data through the catalog for other teams or access data produced by other teams, they start by reaching out to the core data platform team. This initiation stage is critical as it provides a clear pathway for integrating a team’s data requirements into the central system, thus paving the way for synchronizing data management processes. This approach is not just about facilitating access but also ensuring a structured and governed way of handling data, which is necessary for maintaining data integrity and security across the organization.
2. Assess and Create Projects
Once a request is received, the core data platform team undertakes the task of evaluating the requirements to create tailored projects and environments within Amazon DataZone. This phase leverages AWS CloudFormation and a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, ensuring seamless and consistent setups across different use cases and environments. Central to this assessment is determining the appropriate AWS account linkage, whether pre-production or production, to ensure that the tied environment within the project aligns with respective catalogs’ needs.
The environment setup involves meticulous planning and deployment of resources using a managed approach. AWS CloudFormation is employed to script the infrastructure setup, which automates and streamlines the process. This ensures that service teams have the necessary environments configured to meet their specific demands, be it for testing or live operations. By standardizing this phase, HEMA can manage resources efficiently while ensuring robust governance and operational consistency.
3. Set Up and Use Features
Following the creation of projects and environments, service teams at HEMA can fully engage with Amazon DataZone’s comprehensive features to produce and consume data assets. Producers are empowered to publish their data assets to the Data Catalog, leveraging Amazon DataZone’s intuitive interface to approve or reject subscription requests. This not only ensures that data sharing is controlled and monitored but also simplifies the process for data producers who can manage their assets seamlessly.
On the flip side, consumers within the ecosystem can search and access these published data assets using the Amazon DataZone catalog. This feature is particularly valuable as it enables teams to request data access through subscription requests swiftly. This streamlined process significantly reduces the time and effort required for data discovery and access, promoting a culture of data self-service. Teams can now focus on leveraging existing data for analytics, reporting, and strategic planning without the usual administrative hurdles.
4. Enforce Governance Policies
In a decentralized data mesh environment, avoiding governance issues and data mismanagement is crucial. HEMA has emphasized two fundamental principles to maintain data governance while allowing diverse service teams the freedom to manage their resources. Firstly, the Amazon DataZone project structure is configured such that each project contains resources solely managed by the service team responsible for it. This entails that all project members have defined roles and responsibilities, creating a clear boundary for managing resources.
Secondly, environment isolation is enforced rigorously by the core teams, who implement governance policies within the Amazon DataZone configuration. This enforcement ensures that service teams only deploy resources within their sanctioned environments, thereby avoiding unauthorized resource creation and potential governance issues. These measures have been instrumental in maintaining a structured and controlled data operation environment, ensuring consistency and accountability.
5. Adoption Plan: Strategy
To build a collaborative and efficient data ecosystem, HEMA’s central data governance team devised an adoption plan that would add value to all service units rather than disrupt their ongoing projects. The strategy was founded on three core principles: “Launch it,” “Prove value,” and “Be there.” The aim was to introduce an MVP addressing the most critical business needs as soon as possible. This approach ensured that the business would realize immediate benefits and drive early adoption.
They followed up by proving the value through internal seminars and dedicated presentations demonstrating how Amazon DataZone simplifies data-sharing needs. Rather than mandating the use of the new service, HEMA let the advantages draw teams in, encouraging them to adopt the solution willingly. Additionally, the data team ensured they were available to support the teams throughout the adoption phase, creating an environment of collaboration and mutual growth. This approach resonated well with HEMA’s overarching principles and fostered a positive adoption experience.
6. Adoption Plan: Action Points
HEMA adopted a “start small, fine-tune, and iterate” approach to deploying the adoption plan for a decentralized data marketplace using Amazon DataZone. Initially, the Data & Cloud team collaborated with a single business unit, gradually expanding to various units while specifically focusing on the data asset subscription feature. This was introduced for core data assets that were more commonly used across the company to spark interest and facilitate widespread adoption.
As teams became accustomed to the subscription feature, the next step involved supporting the necessary data pipeline optimization for each business unit. This incremental process allowed the Data & Cloud team to manage adoption and address any challenges effectively. Subsequently, HEMA moved to introduce the second critical feature, data publishing, enabling further engagement and functionality. By allowing the domains to pick up the implementation at their own pace, HEMA ensured smooth and gradual adoption across the organization.
7. Results
The implementation of Amazon DataZone quickly gained popularity across HEMA, with numerous business units using the service daily to fulfill their data-sharing needs. A central data catalog allowed teams to seamlessly search, discover, and subscribe to data assets produced within the business. Within months of the launch, HEMA observed remarkable statistics: over 200 data assets published to the catalog, over 180 active subscriptions, more than 100 monthly active users, and over 20 onboarded business units.
Beyond the numerical success, HEMA also realized significant qualitative benefits. Teams gained the ability to autonomously discover data produced by others, facilitating new use cases and innovation that weren’t previously visible. For instance, the data science team developed a new predictive sales model by reusing data available in Amazon DataZone, saving time and improving efficiency. Consequently, HEMA cultivated an energized data organization ready to contribute to shaping the company’s future data operations.
Conclusion
Data has become a priceless asset for businesses, offering essential insights that drive strategic decisions and enhance operational efficiency. However, many companies face obstacles in effectively utilizing their data due to issues such as data silos, poor discoverability, inadequate data quality, and insufficient data literacy and analytical skills to efficiently access and use data across the organization. To address these data management challenges, AWS customers are leveraging Amazon DataZone, a data management service designed to make it easy to catalog, discover, share, and govern data stored across AWS, on-premises, and third-party sources. Acknowledging these benefits, HEMA, a well-known Dutch retail brand, chose to implement Amazon DataZone to revolutionize their data governance strategy.
Since 1926, HEMA has been a staple in Dutch retail, offering uniquely designed daily convenience products. Employing over 17,000 people, HEMA provides exclusive, sustainably designed products across more than 750 stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, and Austria, along with webstores in all these countries. In 2018, they began transitioning their e-commerce system to AWS, allowing developers to innovate and build software quickly using their preferred tools within the AWS Cloud. Five years later, HEMA developers rely on the AWS Cloud for everything from customer-favorite online cake customization to democratizing data for insightful business decisions.
