In 2006, when British mathematician and entrepreneur Clive Humby said “Data is the new oil” he wasn’t just coining a phrase, but hinting towards a new way businesses were about to operate. Known for his work in the field of data science and customer-centric business strategies, Clive’s analogy emphasized the value of data in the modern economy, much like oil has been in the industrial age.
Ever since businesses have been drafting and redrafting Data strategies that would help them succeed. Creating the right data strategy is essential for businesses due to several reasons. It provides Operational Agility as effective data processing is crucial for informed decision-making within organizations. A well-defined data strategy helps companies identify gaps and take corrective actions to improve operations, thus helping with Risk Mitigation. Having a clear plan for collecting, analyzing, and using data fosters a culture of data-driven decision-making. Businesses that strategically use data gain a competitive advantage. Data strategies allow companies to personalize customer interactions, improve service quality, and enhance overall satisfaction. By harnessing the full potential of data assets, organizations can make informed financial decisions and improve their financial performance.
A decade later, in 2016, at a time when the topic of Big Data, Data Governance, and Data Management began to gain strength, Alldatum Business was born to support businesses in their roadmap to data maturity and make data strategies a reality. Founded by Esther Riveroll, the company supports its clients in their business strategies and data initiatives to maximize the exploitation of information and improve decision-making processes.
The Idea
Having worked for several Technology companies such as IBM, Oracle, Sybase, SAP, and Informatica, Esther saw in the market an increasing necessity to obtain more value out of data. Having multiple sources of data from diverse systems such as on-premise, cloud, social networks, wearables, and chatbots, among others, generates a chaotic data explosion that must be managed to exploit all its benefits.
“More and more people can see that technology is going to lead the way forward, but few are considering how best to link this technology to the clear and present human need. In 2016, I had the opportunity to create my own company, and for the last 8 years, it has established itself as the human side of technology,” says Esther.
Since then, Alldatum Business has been supporting its clients in recognizing their opportunities and creating digital transformation strategies that will help them exploit the best use of their data and information.
The Ideator
Esther Riveroll, the Founder and CEO of Alldatum Business, has an inspiring story of resilience and achievement. She overcame the fear of failure and numerous challenges to create her own successful brand. During her adolescence, she was passionate about sports and was an aerobics teacher. Although she enrolled in college to study applied mathematics and computing, her passion was to exercise and her goal was to set up a gym.
On a fateful day, Esther had a car accident that prevented her from exercising for a while with which she realized that she had to focus on her professional career and that is how she began to put more effort into her profession.
Esther chose a career in STEM because she always liked to challenge her mind and solve problems, and was inspired by her high school teacher to love math. The more difficult the problem was, the more she was attracted to solving it. Thus began her passion for technology and everything related to data modeling, analytics, and problem-solving through the creation of data and analytics strategies.
Before founding Alldatum, Esther faced a pivotal moment when the technology company she worked for was acquired by investment funds, leading to office closures worldwide. Unemployed but determined, she seized an opportunity to continue selling their solutions in Mexico as a business partner. This marked the birth of Alldatum, where Esther sought the best alliances and solutions to support customers in their business and technological strategies. She introduced Orchestra EBX to Mexico and Central America in 2018, and Alldatum now maintains a partner relationship with Tibco and SnapLogic. The company now collaborates with clients beyond Mexico City, reaching countries such as Peru, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and the United States.
Challenges Enroute
The main challenge for Esther was to shift from an employee mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset. She always had to keep in mind that the most important thing about her company is not only to go and sell but to keep all the company’s processes impeccable in order to meet her commitments. She learned that having all your processes and your operation running with excellence is the key to maintaining and positioning yourself. Also having the right values so that your collaborators always comply with the mission, and vision of the company carrying and living the values of integrity, honesty, excellence, teamwork, etc.
“When you start no one teaches you everything that can happen, so you have to always be attentive to areas of improvement and situations that you don’t know you would face to make decisions quickly and always be able to solve any situation that may arise,” recalls Esther Riveroll.
She continues, “To be an entrepreneur you need to have a lot of endurance and strength. You have to live executing in the present but having an eye on the future to always be making the right decisions for the success of your company and also because every decision you make can affect the course and the result for the people who trust you and are part of your company.”
Another challenge in the area of data is definitely that there is no skill in the market for the needs that we have and that there is so much information that sometimes it is misinformation. So what her team did was create Alldatum Academy to be able to train students in their work. The company also created its own methodology to solve not only with what the books say but with its own experienced situations that allow it to give a better result when implementing its strategies with customers.
“For me, it has always been that the harder it is, the more I like it. I always like to have new challenges and make my mind work on how to solve new challenges and things we don’t know. Today we are fortunate that information is at hand, in the past, there was not so much information available, everything was in manuals and books and sometimes you did not have access to it. Today success is in knowing how to look for information to be able to solve any familiar task or situation that arises when you are on the road,” says Esther Riveroll.
The Long-term Vision
For Alldatum, the vision is to never lose sight of the fact that the only constant is change. What was innovative yesterday and worked today may be obsolete in the future and in much less time than before. “In order to survive, you have to have a vision of constant change and innovation. Likewise, your competitors are no longer the same as before and you have to always be looking to be better and never settle,” states Esther Riveroll.
She explains that Digitizing something is not the same as doing a digital transformation project. Digitizing is only leaving paper, for example, to have something in digital format, such as having a paper ticket and now you have it in an application. Digital transformation has to do with a strategy of reviewing your end-to-end processes and in that process digitally transforming by implementing technology, changing the way people collaborate and operate, and reviewing the optimization of the process itself. Maybe you even have to involve people outside your company who are part of this process and they have to be part of the strategy to be successful.
“Today, those who do not digitally transform will lose competitiveness and are exposed to other companies with innovation and vision winning the market and better positioning their brand,” sums up Esther Riveroll.
Plethora of Services
Alldatum Business offers a range of data-related services to help organizations optimize their operations and decision-making:
- Master Data Management (MDM): Alldatum simplifies multidomain MDM by providing a unified solution to manage, govern, and share master data. Whether it’s products, customers, employees, or financial hierarchies, accurate and consistent master data streamlines processes and enhances reporting and analysis.
- Data Governance: Alldatum supports data governance programs with a process-driven repository. It captures critical data elements, business terms, policies, rules, and responsibilities. Users collaborate through intuitive interfaces, ensuring compliance, reducing costs, and enabling data-driven processes.
- Data Quality and Cataloging: Alldatum recognizes that maintaining data quality is an ongoing process. Their tools help organizations sustain high levels of data quality, preventing inconsistencies over time. From reference data to slowly changing dimensions, Alldatum’s services ensure data remains reliable and valuable.
Addressing Data and Metadata Challenges
Alldatum has its own methodology that allows it to support clients across all data disciplines. Its methodology does not only involve implementing technology and expecting the client to know all the rules and requirements to implement it. It supports them in creating the strategy, aligning concepts, and discovering together the business cases to be solved and what they need to do. With this, they can have successful projects in all areas from integration, quality, catalogs, metadata, lineage, master data, and data security.
“Everyone needs a data strategy, but a data strategy is not only about technology, it is also about people, their roles, reinventing themselves, reengineering data processes, internal communication, and adapting to change. Doing things differently, with better collaboration and with the right processes for the success of all business cases,” explains Esther Riveroll.
Guarding Against Cybercrimes
Apart from implementing data strategies, businesses need to prepare and prevent information theft, digital identity vulnerabilities, and other cybercrimes. Esther suggests that in addition to the use of technology, it is extremely important to implement strategies for continuous training and monitoring of the applications to which employees have access. When a vulnerability exists, it often starts with a person making a mistake and opens up a security breach. Companies have to keep people always informed, and systems updated, and implement cybersecurity tools such as antivirus, firewalls, VPN, etc.
As we now work remotely, businesses must generate policies for the use of confidential data, and protection of information, that give guidelines to people on how they should protect confidentiality and data. They need to analyze and review the responsibility matrices and roles very well to be able to give permissions and access to the information only to the right people. Have single sign-on solutions as well as platforms to manage passwords. They should also review which tools protect not only the organization’s systems but the surrounding ecosystem and networks as well.
“The topic of cybersecurity is exciting, we are all exposed but with the right measures, training people, generating strategies with white-collar hackers to test you for the exposure you have, and taking action before a real exposure, all this helps to minimize any probable adverse situation,” shares Esther Riveroll.
Creating a Humane Work Culture
Alldatum lives as its slogan says: “The human side of technology”. The company firmly believes that there should be respect between people and its values are totally oriented towards promoting equality and inclusion regardless of religion, gender, or beliefs.
The Organization is like a family, and the core team encourages support and teamwork. Esther Riveroll and her core team create collaborative initiatives such as wellness challenges. They have people in various parts of the Mexican Republic and even in Canada, Guatemala, and Colombia and they seek despite the distance employees feel safe in an environment where they can express themselves, learn, and grow with the help of their work team.
“We have zero tolerance for bullying and mistreatment of people in Alldatum, it doesn’t matter if it is a collaborator, client, partner, whoever is around us must have the same values and respect that we promote in Alldatum,” states Esther Riveroll.
Trends and Plans Ahead
Given the dynamic nature of the world, everything changes swiftly. The IT industry we know now will not be the same in 5 years. Esther Riveroll feels we will surely see many new technological solutions, generative artificial intelligence will continue to advance, and data strategies will never cease to be relevant because there will no longer be only data as in the past in relational databases but also other types of data to consider such as unstructured data generated by social networks, biometrics, IoT, photographs, videos, etc.
She believes that the sentiment analysis of brands on social networks will have an impact on decision-making. Much more competitors will emerge in the areas of data and analytics. Data strategies will become more important in order to have successful Analytics strategies. “The only way to face all this is to never stop learning, observing, training, and being ready to change or generate alliances when the time is right. Never be in your comfort zone and be ready to be in constant motion,” says Esther Riveroll.
Considering change is constant, Alldatum will have to always be reviewing and planning its next steps. The plan in Alldatum Academy is always improving with everything they are learning and they see what they need along the way. Every day more competitors emerge, but the difference is not only in the technology or in saying that you compete in something, but in demonstrating through references that you are different and Alldatum’s methodology supports it for the trust of its customers and therefore its growth.
Speaking about the future plans, Esther Riveroll concludes by saying, “We already have customers in Colombia, USA, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, and Mexico. The world is our goal. We want to collaborate with customers all around the world. To continue giving opportunities to new young professionals.”
The following sections need to be designed in PDF:
Quote: “Words convince but example drags… Your example will always generate followers, so try to make sure that your behavior is always one that if the people follow you will be proud of that.”
Quote: “Alldatum Business, known as “The data highway experts,” collaborates with clients to refine and improve their data strategy.”
Quote: “How challenges are faced when you are an entrepreneur is always with an attitude of strength and humility not to miss any detail that always makes you improve and move forward.“
Quote: “Information is power. We help the customer gain wisdom from their data for better decision-making.”
Esther’s Message for Aspiring Entrepreneurs:
First is that you choose to undertake something that is not a job for you, that it is something that you like and are passionate about because there will be times when you feel alone and think that you will not be able to handle the challenge.
Follow your hunch, no matter what others have lived or the experience of others, you create your own experiences. Learn from others’ experiences, but do not allow someone else to tell you that you can’t do anything, and never stop being humble to understand that not everything is always going to go well, things may not go well but with humility, you have to learn from that, make modifications and move forward.
Live in the present but with an eye on the future to always be innovating and have the ability to move quickly when needed.
Surround yourselves with the right people who have the same values as you and form a human enterprise, which always takes into consideration what is best for you and others. Learn every day and teach what you have learned to leave a legacy.
Never forget social responsibility and in their entrepreneurship seek to help and create a better world for all. It is not only how much I sell and how much I earn, but you also have to measure yourself by how much good you are doing since you have been given the opportunity to make a difference for people and the world with your entrepreneurship.
Leave a legacy not only thinking about being famous and rich. That is very good too, but never forget in the process to make good.
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