Streamlining Data Infrastructure for Efficient Operations and Tangible Cost Savings

Thirty Madison, a pioneering collective of virtual-first healthcare brands, faced the complex challenge of unifying data infrastructure following its acquisition of NuRx. With two distinct Looker instances—one from Thirty Madison and one from NuRx—the company found itself in a quandary. The objective was not merely a combination of these instances, but also a reorganization of datasets to fit into Thirty Madison's existing structure. This integration would enable cost-efficient, company-wide data infrastructure and analytics reporting, overcoming the need for manual data manipulation across disparate systems.

The primary challenge was that Thirty Madison operated with a lean internal team. Despite being a significantly sized brand, the team had a backlog of day-to-day tasks, including generating new reports and maintaining current operations. Given this, they lacked the bandwidth to handle the migration process on their own. The necessity for a partner with experience in such Looker migration projects, and a grasp of data best practices, led them to enlist Mammoth Growth.

There was a noticeable difference in how data was organized across the two companies. The folder structures, reporting processes, and access systems differed significantly, adding another layer of complexity to the integration. An obvious solution of simply copy-pasting data could potentially lead to future issues and reporting inefficiencies, given the different organizational structures and the crucial need to maintain ease of access for the teams.

The fact that both companies were in the healthcare sector introduced another crucial aspect—compliance with HIPAA regulations. Not all data fields could be accessed by everyone in the company, necessitating careful consideration of security controls during the migration. This posed a dual challenge: ensuring that the migration and reorganization of data were seamless, and simultaneously establishing stringent security controls to maintain data privacy and adhere to HIPAA requirements.

This multifaceted challenge required a partner capable of not just executing the task but also providing a consultative approach, ensuring that the data migration fit seamlessly into Thirty Madison's organizational structure while maintaining the necessary security measures. Mammoth Growth stepped in to address these challenges, steering the migration project with its expertise in data strategy.

The Journey: Mapping, Migrating, and Accelerating

Mammoth Growth undertook the challenge, which boiled down to merging and moving 100+ Dashboards, 180+ Views, and 60+ Explores from one Looker instance into Thirty Madison's Looker structure. The first major hurdle was the difference in compliance structures. Since both companies operate within the healthcare sector, their data is governed by HIPAA regulations.  The task was not about recreating the security controls, but rather migrating the data into a development environment and then fine-tuning field-level access controls to ensure alignment between the data infrastructures of both entities before merging them into the production system. 

This task was no mean feat, and a rigorous process was deployed—an iterative collaboration that required consistent back-and-forth between Mammoth team leads and Thirty Madison points of contact. Despite the complexities, Mammoth Growth adapted and executed, playing a vital role in crafting a data infrastructure that fit snugly into Thirty Madison's system while still complying with necessary security measures.

Another challenge was time. After the project kicked off, Thirty Madison asked to accelerate project timelines and challenged the Mammoth Team to complete the project much sooner than originally requested. The Mammoth team reevaluated its resourcing plan and was able to quickly and seamlessly scale the project team to not only meet expectations but significantly surpass them, turning a potential obstacle into a testament to their ability to adjust and deliver under pressure.

To expedite the process, Mammoth Growth developed a systematic method to handle the dashboard migration. Roughly half of the project's timeline was meticulously dedicated to devising and fine-tuning a systematic approach for data migration and integration. This significant time investment in strategic planning and groundwork all but eliminated post-migration bugs and need for rework. This thorough preparatory phase, in turn, ensured a low-risk execution against the demanding timeline and instilled a high degree of confidence in the project's successful and timely completion.The resulting process was so effective that, at one point, the team migrated a staggering 50-60 dashboards in a single sprint—an extraordinary velocity that showcased the ultra-precise, systematic approach that the team deployed.

The Results: Compliance, Efficiency, and Tangible Savings

The project culminated in a complete cloud data migration and integration, enabling Thirty Madison and NuRx to socialize the new system across their numerous teams with minimal interruption. When NuRx users logged into their existing system, they were met with redirect links taking them seamlessly to their new destinations in the Thirty Madison instance. The previously separated datasets were now merged and structured according to Thirty Madison's compliance requirements, forming an integrated data infrastructure that could serve as the foundational bedrock for the potential future development of a comprehensive, company-wide performance reporting system.

Furthermore, the migration opened up the opportunity to decommission the old NuRx instance, thereby eliminating the need to renew another year’s contract with Looker. Considering the high costs associated with world-class data analytics and business intelligence solutions such as Looker, the cost savings will prove to be significant.

The project showcased Mammoth Growth's ability to migrate and streamline data infrastructure, ultimately leading to more efficient operations, company-wide reports and significant cost savings. Though this project was a data migration architecture integration from one Looker instance to another, it was indeed a 'data transformation' journey—paving the way for future collaborations.

The successful completion of the project left a lasting positive impression on Thirty Madison, opening the door to potential future reliance on Mammoth Growth’s infrastructure migration services.

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