Five years ago, Jake and I set out to build a tool that would inspire and empower online businesses to make data-driven decisions. From our time as venture capital analysts, we knew that too few businesses were using their data as a strategic asset. We also knew that when they did, they performed better.
I built the first MVP of RJMetrics in my attic, and our approach to product was entirely bottoms-up. We weren’t yet experts in the business intelligence industry or even the nascent world of big data. We were, however, experts in our customers and their needs. We focused on providing the features and infrastructure that would actually change their behavior and help them grow their businesses faster.
That approach served us very well, and led us to a standout product that is used today by hundreds of companies and thousands of users to make better business decisions. It also gave us an opportunity to meet and learn from the most innovative companies in the world, both our customers and not, about where things are going in the universe of data and analytics for online businesses.
The opportunity is enormous and growing fast—companies, big and small, have ever-increasing volumes of data, and that data is scattered over an increasing number of sources. Every company doing business online needs a way to efficiently consolidate and analyze that data, and the current landscape of solutions falls flat when it comes to finding a holistic solution to this problem.
About a year ago, we decided to seize this opportunity and double down on the future. We gave ourselves a mandate to make RJMetrics the very best product for online businesses to consolidate, analyze, and act on their data.
We had just raised a round of funding, and had the resources to think big. We combined the vision and values of RJMetrics with bleeding-edge technologies to build a world-class data analytics platform. Some of the smartest engineers on the planet kicked my code from the attic to the curb and built a next-generation RJMetrics that will launch us, and our customers, into the future.
After a full year of late nights, I’m incredibly proud to announce the results: the new version of RJMetrics is live. Over the past few weeks we’ve been stealthily migrating our existing customers (who are being automatically upgraded without any work on their end), and today we’re opening the doors to new customers.
The RJMetrics platform is a turnkey, full-stack solution that includes best-in-class solutions for consolidating and analyzing data at any scale:
Data Replication
RJMetrics can automatically extract data from all leading database platforms, along with a large and growing universe of third-party SaaS tools. Data can also be pushed to us via file uploads and our API.
What this means for you: No matter how many different services and databases have information about the people that interact with your business, you can get that data into RJMetrics quickly and easily for a single, centralized view.
Transformation Cluster
Combining the data from these many sources is a critical part of the data pipeline. We provide a robust set of functionality to cleanse, denormalize, and aggregate your data before analysis begins. Our next-generation Transformation Cluster is built on top of Hadoop, the world’s leading distributed data processing engine, allowing it to scale as data volume grows.
What this means for you: RJMetrics is able to handle larger volumes of data than ever.
Analytic Warehouse
Data in RJMetrics is stored in a columnar data store, powered by Amazon Redshift. This allows your RJMetrics data warehouse to scale to virtually unlimited data sizes while providing performant analysis. RJMetrics manages all of the details—loading, pre-calculation, caching, and cluster configuration—allowing you to focus on analysis and insights.
What this means for you: RJMetrics is fast and can store enormous amounts of data without compromising user experience or our famously low time-to-value.
Report Builder
RJMetrics’ new platform includes a next-generation interface for data exploration and analysis called the Report Builder. Users can easily combine data from multiple sources, perform calculations, and segment data in a single intuitive visual interface.
What this means for you: Exploring your data has never been easier or faster. Business users and data scientists alike now have full access to a powerful and intuitive ad hoc analysis tool.
Existing customers have been given access to the Report Builder over the past few weeks, and the reactions have been incredible. This is already saving our clients hours of time and uncovering new insights like never before.
(If you’re curious how all the parts of our analytics platform fit together, check out our platform page.)
What’s next?
This is just the beginning. We have big plans, and there’s a still lot of work to do to realize our dream.
Everything on our roadmap is in service of a single goal: to minimize the latency between your questions and actions. We think that the most successful online businesses are the ones who relentlessly innovate, experiment, and use data to drive their decisions. We want to enable you to iterate through that process as fast as possible, and we’re building the tools to help you do just that.
If you haven’t checked out RJMetrics before, now is a great time to see what we can do for your business. And if you’ve used us in the past, take a minute to check out the new platform. We think you’ll like it. Click here to get a free proof of concept up and running for your data now.
If you’re a current customer, I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you and welcome to the new RJMetrics. It’s been your support and your constant feedback that’s made RJMetrics into the platform, and the company, it is today.
