Getting started with Matillion Data Productivity Cloud as a business user

I joined the People Operations department at Matillion almost five years ago. Since then, I have moved into a Product Operations role. 

Although my role has given me a deeper understanding of the product, the prospect of engaging with our Data Productivity Cloud (DPC) initially seemed intimidating to me as a non-technical person without experience in data engineering.

One of Matillion’s core values is being customer-obsessed, so it is crucial that our products are accessible to everyone, not just data professionals, to ensure that our customers get true value from our products. 

Recently, I inadvertently put that core value to the test by finally taking the plunge and getting started with our DPC with a colleague from People Ops, Mariusz Flis, who had also not used the product. 

To ensure it wasn’t a case of the blind leading the blind, we roped in our highly knowledgeable (and patient) colleague John Bagnall, one of our Senior Product Managers, to help show us around and answer our (many) questions.

Due to our operational roles at Matillion, Mariusz and I are used to handling various types of data, but usually in a more straightforward, less technical way. So, when we joined the Zoom call for John’s demo, I was a bit apprehensive. 

After all, data productivity tools often seem geared towards data engineers, making them feel a bit out of reach for folks in business roles like ours. But right from the start, John did a fantastic job at easing us into it. 

He kicked us off with a quick tour of the DPC. Although we were familiar with some terminology, such as pipelines, John was able to explain what we were looking at in layperson's terms. 

The more John explained, the more I realised things were more straightforward than I initially thought. I was also surprised by how user-friendly and intuitive the platform was, even for people like Mariusz and I, who are not data experts.

John also talked us through how we would go about setting up our first project. Upon seeing things like the drag-and-drop interface, I felt confident that I could use it quite easily without any coding skills. 

It wasn’t long before we were coming up with ideas for integrating data from different sources, such as payroll and our employee information systems, to help us create business insights. 

Although it was (and still is) exciting to think of the possibilities of handling our own data tasks without relying on our data insights team, the real selling point for us at the time was the dashboard.   

Being able to get real-time insights into performance and metrics means we can save time and make better, quicker data-led decisions. This is especially true given how easy it is to share your dashboard with other teams to ensure alignment across the organisation.

Ever since that onboarding session, I’ve been getting more acquainted with Matillion. Despite my initial reservations, I’ve been really impressed by how user-friendly and accessible the DPC is for a non-techy like myself.

Now, I can definitely see why so many of our customers love our product!