Executive Summary

Maui Jim Laid out ambitious plans for the Enterprise Data Hub’s second phase of development, involving several different initiatives that demanded flexibility in schedule and cooperation between several third parties. iOLAP and Maui Jim partnered together again to accomplish each initiative, sometimes collaborating with other third parties.

Background

Maui Jim defined several small projects that ultimately were rolled up into a single large project, handled by a small agile team of data engineers, a solution architect, and a PM, along with supporting resources as necessary. The initiatives that were developed in this phase include:

• Product: A 2-phase project to integrate product attribute data into the EDH and to develop a tool that would allow business user to access and utilize this data quickly on the fly

• Inventory: A large project that aimed to provide access to inventory data to both the supply chain and finance teams, both of which had very different needs with varying complexities

  o There is a second phase planned, with several designs that were created in this phase

• Salesforce: A 2-phase project to integrate the EDH with Salesforce (both inbound and outbound integrations) for both loyalty and marketing needs

iOLAP and Maui Jim also collaborated with Polsource to facilitate the Salesforce integration and Airtable to implement the second phase of the product initiative.

Approach

• The approach to this development was agile-based, with an emphasis on flexibility and speed when needed, as the requirements and priorities were changed quickly.

• Solutions would be designed by managers and solution architects, and once documented, would be developed by data engineers. Both parties would commonly troubleshoot issues together, and Maui Jim would sign off on all solutions and actions. Once developed and tested, the objects built would be deployed by the AMS team at Maui Jim, a separate team that manages the infrastructure of the EDH.

AWS Technologies Used

The EDH refers to an AWS Redshift instance. An Aurora instance is used for control and configuration of the EDH. Data often comes from an S3 data lake that serves as a staging area for data from several different sources.

Lambda and Step Functions were used to send data from the EDH to Airtable.

iOLAP’s Role

iOLAP partnered closely with Maui Jim when designing specific objects to be built. Both parties would sign off jointly on all design documents. iOLAP’s data engineers would develop the objects, with Maui Jim performing the testing and validation. The development team would conduct post-go-live support until it was determined that the managed services team could safely take over the management of all developed solutions. iOLAP worked in conjunction with key business stakeholders to document and analyze the business requirements to ensure the core data model and solution would meet current analytical requirements and provide flexibility for the future.

Results and Benefits

The quality of solutions implemented was often praised by Maui Jim. Results of these solutions include:

• Automation of key medium and high complexity calculations that, before being implemented in the EDH, were done manually by business users

• The business gained visibility to product, inventory, loyalty, and marketing data that could be accessed quickly and securely, as well as reporting that is based on said data

• Key integrations to other tools such as Salesforce and Airtable that were critical to the functions of those platforms, as well as visibility of data generated by those platforms to other users of the EDH

Why iOLAP?

iOLAP and Maui Jim have developed a strong and positive relationship over the past couple years, not just company to company, but at an individual level. Each understands the other’s situation and how the other works. This close relationship allows a small company like iOLAP to tailor its services and strategies to a particular client like Maui Jim.

Maui Jim is comfortable with iOLAP’s quality of work and appreciates iOLAP’s flexibility.

iOLAP worked with Maui Jim to define all data and analytics processes and strategies currently used in the EDH, and is uniquely suited to develop, deploy, and maintain the solution in accordance with those strategies.