WHY I STARTED TaleAboutData?

My primary reason for starting Tale About Data (TAD) was because I wanted to write a book and start a podcast. In fact, TAD was born because I wanted to change the way companies collect, process and visualize data – that's the more realistic way of looking at it anyway.

I'd seen organizations spend tens of thousands – or even millions – of dollars hiring big data teams only to burn them out with boring jobs, or make their lives complicated by constantly changing things up. They should have been letting them explore, experiment and build the company's future. Companies I met along the way typically wasted months on trying to maneuver their data into one place. Sooner or later, they'd realize that it didn't meet the team's needs or expectations, and then they'd go into a rebuild phrase that lost more time and delayed decision-making.

When Tale About Data was reborn as a product, I decided that, going forward, we would focus on solving the four most expensive problems that companies face:

 OWN YOUR DATA

The problem: I was working with many companies, but one of the common issues I noticed was their over-reliance on third parties to track user activity, collect their costs and revenues and aggregate reports. Whilst this is a great option for saving money, ultimately, you place a limit on the data collected and how long it is stored for. Using numerous Excel files to store data, with or without mistakes, is a common method. There is no true data source.

The solution: Tale About Data helps your data stay e-privacy compliant, stored on your server, with you in control and only pushing to partners safely. Our solution enables YOU to own your user data and SHARE with third parties only what you think is relevant.

Whether it’s your user data or performance, we collect it all on your server. This gives you full control over who accesses your data and how it is shared. Keep your data where it suits you most (AWS, GC or Azura), sharing only what's relevant for third parties and protecting your traffic and user data.

DATA STANDARDS FOR E-PRIVACY

The problem: I was working with two kinds of business: some had an army of lawyers and others were too small to even afford a lawyer. With both kinds of company, compliance with data privacy laws should have been of paramount importance. “I asked for consent” is no longer a valid defense; businesses must rely on the most relevant legal guidance before collecting, storing and processing personal data, and they should ensure transparency at all times. When data processing is based on consent, it should be informed, given freely, unambiguous and properly recorded. When it is based on legitimate interest, businesses must identify it and explain how it's valid. They should balance this against the end-user’s interests, rights and freedoms. Regarding cookies, there can be uncertainties between opt-out for performance cookies and prior consent for tracking mechanisms which monitor behavior.

In addition, employees of businesses that act as a “data controller” must be properly trained. They should understand what “personal data” really means – not just the end-user's name and email address, but their IP address too and their tracked events, etc. It's important to bear in mind the legal uncertainty arising from the fact that the ePrivacy Regulation has not yet come into force.

 With the Covid-19 crisis, the digital market – not just e-commerce, but digital healthcare and other kinds too – is growing. End-users' data privacy is the cornerstone of every business. Attorneys are needed to review data infrastructure, maintain the record of processing activities and adjust labor contracts bringing them in line with data protection law. They're needed to draft data protection policies, data privacy programs, contract clauses (such as data protection agreements, security measures, etc.), training materials, declarations of consent and confidentiality agreements that ensure the non-disclosure of protected data. This isn't limited to the European GDPR which applies to EU-citizens; we must also remember LGDP which will soon apply in Brazil and CCPA which has affected California residents since January 1st 2020. The list is just getting longer.

The average hourly cost of an e-privacy lawyer is €500, but having access to in-house lawyers can also set a business back by €95-130K gross per year.

The solution: Tale About Data will save you tens of thousands of euros in expenses. Our “Lake Side” solution has been built with modern privacy regulations in mind. That’s why you can run “Lake Side'' on your server. It's you who owns the data and has access to it – secure, cleansed and anonymized. User data is collected by a first-party tracker, and only after it has been processed and hashed are you able to share it with third parties based on user consent.

UNTRUSTWORTHY DATA

The problem: I can’t count the meetings I spent wanting to melt into my chair and disappear from the room. The meeting would usually look a bit like this: the finance team presents acquisition and retention figures and the head of marketing jumps out of their chair and says "no, those figures are wrong, we have different figures". Then the marketing team proceed to present their numbers, only to discover that the Excel sheet they sent to the finance is outdated. I, as the employee responsible for data, then have to explain to my colleagues that we are still working on reports for the finance team, and that in fact, finance has asked for completely different data sources… It goes on and on, and soon, instead of making decisions, we end the meeting saying “we really need to solve our data problems!”

The solution: Tale About Data helps you see things clearly. We gather users' behavioral events and the third party data that your teams need. Ready for analyzing, testing and data warehousing, TAD can offer you a clear customer picture and address privacy concerns and the lack of a single data source.

Lake Side manages your data pipeline 24/7, so you save time on building or upgrading APIs. Everything is automatically uploaded to your server. Naturally, constant monitoring ensures instant notifications for issues, so you'll never present incorrect numbers again.

FIND YOUR DATA LEVERS DATA

The problem: Each team member had different priorities, so I was often faced with an excess of KPIs. We ended up having one report for SEA, another for SEO and ASO, another for Facebook and Google… you get the picture. How can you make clear decisions about where the business is headed? How do you understand where your next euro investment should be? Lacking a clear data strategy for user acquisition and retention means each team is measured by their own KPIs – they can create a narrative that may not benefit wider business goals or growth.

The solution: Tale About Data bridges the gap between your teams, readjusting their focus on growth and user retention. This is because we provide the infrastructure you need to reveal insights from clear, actionable and streamlined data. We can help you generate KPIs that make a real difference to your business… without taking on data engineers.

Lake Side gives you the data you need to understand the impact of releases on the product life cycle. You'll be able to see what has enabled improvement and what has had a negative impact. Your business will then be able to communicate, make plans and take action to support growth – before it affects your bottom line (or users stop using you).