What is data lineage?

Collecting and managing data is an essential part of every business. For example, you can use data to improve marketing efforts by capturing your target customer’s age, location, interests, pain points, and other important information.

However, sometimes you don’t know if this data is coming from a trusted source or is up-to-date.

This is where data lineage comes in.

Data lineage tracks data’s origins, characteristics, and overall quality. It improves transparency and simplifies the process of tracing data back to its roots. This allows you to spot errors, make changes, and use data with confidence.

What are the benefits of data lineage?

Data lineage offers several powerful benefits for businesses. Some of these benefits include:

• Increased transparency
• Improved scalability and sustainability
• Straightforward data migration

Increased transparency

Modern businesses have several data entry points, and this can get complicated. It leads to confusion—you won’t be sure if the data is accurate or not, and it makes double-checking existing data difficult.

That’s why it’s vital to track data lineage in a consistent and easy-to-understand manner. It gives employers, employees, and users transparency and a deep understanding of the data being collected.

Improved scalability and sustainability

Managing large amounts of data is challenging with traditional systems.

However, data lineage tools are meant to simplify, withdraw, and manage large amounts of data without much effort.

These data lineage tools are super easy to set up, and you can scale your systems in a short amount of time. Many software programs also offer advanced features that allow you to avoid severe issues like bottle-necking. This is helpful since you can save yourself from future headaches.

Straightforward data migration

There are several reasons why you’ll need to migrate data. Maybe you need to upgrade a database, create a new data warehouse, or merge new data. Unfortunately, this process can be a hassle without suitable systems in place.

One of the first steps is to know and understand your data. This is difficult without transparent data lineage. In fact, we created our own reverse ETL solution called Lytics Cloud Connect, in part, for clearer data lineage and management. The solution allows you to easily stream data from your data warehouse to your downstream tools. Using simple queries, you can organize and export data by specific buyer behaviors to improve targeting and make more data-driven decisions. So while data migration seems intimidating, with practical tools and systems on hand, your migration process won’t be frustrating and confusing.

(For more on Cloud Connect watch our explainer video below or read our introductory blog).

Now that we understand the benefits of data lineage, let’s cover some techniques and examples.

Data lineage examples and techniques

Here are some data lineage techniques that you can use to organize data within your company:

• Manual lineage
• Lineage by data tagging

Manual lineage

Manually mapping out data starts by talking to people in your company and understanding the data. This provides a lineage of knowledge about your organization.

Once you’ve collected the necessary data, you can organize and manage it in a spreadsheet.

However, this system has its drawbacks.

First, it’s tedious; you and your team shouldn’t attempt this technique if you don’t have advanced data recovery and management skills.

Also, if you fail to interview a person or department in your company, your lineage will be missing critical information.

Lineage by data tagging

Data tagging is simply a process in which every piece of data that you move is labeled by a data lineage tool and tracked from start to finish. This allows you to organize every piece of information in your company, like photos and research, by matching it with keywords and tags.

What separates data tagging from other techniques is that it provides a detailed understanding of a piece of data from start to finish. With this knowledge, you can easily spot errors.

What to look for in a data lineage tool

Now that we’ve covered some data lineage examples and techniques, let’s go through what to look for in an effective data lineage tool.

Ease of use

Regardless of how advanced a tool is, if it isn’t easy to use, it isn’t worth integrating into your business.

You want a tool that offers everything you need in a simple dashboard that you can access from your desktop or mobile device.

With Lytics, signing up for an account is very easy. Once you’ve gotten started, you’ll be greeted with a simple yet advanced dashboard that allows you to onboard and manage essential data. Here are some features you’ll find on the dashboard:

• User engagement metrics
• Behavioral analytics
• Audience segmentation

These features ensure that you have everything you need to build and manage data lineage.

Advanced data onboarding and management

As we mentioned, a tool like Lytics enables you to onboard and manage your company’s data simply—with the click of just a few buttons.

It also allows you to build an audience if you haven’t already. And if you have an existing audience, you can grow it and export their data to Lytics for easy management.

Integration features

You also want a tool that can easily integrate with other platforms that you’re using to run your business. This ensures that data management is a seamless process.

Lytics integrates with most business platforms, including:

• Amazon DSP
• AWS Kinesis
• Facebook
• Google Ads
• Hubspot

So if you’re using these platforms, Lytics will integrate with them to streamline your work processes.

Track essential information with data lineage

Using the correct data lineage techniques and tools is essential for managing and transforming data and tracking its origins. Most importantly, you and your team won’t be left confused and frustrated.

If you need help gathering real-time insights from your customer data, feel free to contact Lytics. And if you want to see Cloud Connect in action, try it free and test your first segments today.