September 2022 Summaries

In September, new connectors were released for ChurnZero, Poplar, Great Question, and Microsoft Teams, with enhancements also made to Pipedrive, Freshdesk, and the Segment Builder. Upcoming events include a live session on product-led growth and data operationalization at Figma, as well as an on-demand Q&A about choosing the right data integration tool for RevOps. Culture Amp is highlighted in OA in Action, sharing how they use Census to help their sales teams move faster with data insights.

Snowflake's External Functions allow users to leverage code from outside Snowflake, enabling them to access API endpoints using SQL within the platform. This feature increases available possibilities within Snowflake, reduces data pipeline needs, and facilitates integration with external APIs. Setting up External Functions requires some software engineering expertise, especially for creating new APIs. However, with an existing API, it's a relatively easy process. The tutorial demonstrates how to create an external function to enrich sales leads with a ranking score from a machine learning model API, integrating the API with Snowflake and authenticating usage. Once created, the external function can be used to enrich data in views or tables, providing valuable insights for business decision-making. While there are advantages to using External Functions, such as data enrichment without external pipelines, there are also disadvantages, including time and opportunity costs required for integration and maintenance.

Permissions play a crucial role in ensuring the security and integrity of data assets within the software industry, particularly in cloud infrastructures, application development, and data management. Data warehouse tools like Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, and dbt offer various solutions to help protect access to sensitive data assets. In dbt, permissions can be configured using the profiles.yml file or dbt Cloud, allowing administrators to control user-level access and fine-grained permission control. By assigning the correct permissions to users and tools, organizations can maintain the integrity of their one source of truth - their data warehouse - and prevent potential problems such as unauthorized access or accidental deletion of critical data models. Effective permission management is essential for ensuring the security and quality of data assets in dbt, and it should be considered from the very start of project implementation.

There's nothing more frustrating than presenting business teams with a beautiful report filled with data, only to see them move in the opposite direction of what the data suggests. To overcome this, data leaders must incorporate psychology into their analysis and presentation, breaking down the data into its meaning, why it matters, and how it should be used. By understanding user motivations and testing hypotheses, data teams can create more impactful stories that resonate with business leaders. Data predicts behavior, but psychology influences it. By adding a dash of persuasion to data science, teams can increase their impact across the business and make better decisions about product development and marketing strategies. Ultimately, data leaders must influence people, not just present numbers, to truly magnify their output and drive business results.

In the high seas of SaaS competition, leveraging customer data is crucial for making informed decisions about product-led growth (PLG), which involves iterative improvements based on customer feedback. Customer data helps businesses understand user needs and preferences, identify areas for improvement, and personalize experiences to drive engagement and retention. By using customer data, companies can build a 360° view of their users, track behavior in-product, and gain insights into the product's effectiveness. This enables them to make evidence-based decisions, measure success, and iterate on the product experience to achieve PLG with confidence.

The Snowflake SQL API allows developers to access and execute SQL queries in their instance, making it easier to integrate Snowflake into applications. The API is structured around the `/api/v2/statements/` endpoint, which can be used to submit a SQL statement for execution, check its status, or cancel it. Authentication is required using JSON Web Token (JWT) or OAuth. Developers can customize their requests by adding variables to the SQL command and specifying bindings. The API returns a ResultSet object containing metadata about the returned data, as well as the first partition of data. Additional GET requests can be used to fetch extra partitions of data. Integrating this API into an application is relatively simple but requires ongoing maintenance, which can become time-consuming. An alternative solution is Census, a reverse ETL tool that allows developers to move data from Snowflake into all their tools without setting up and maintaining these integrations.

This series is exploring how to turn product data into more revenue by leveraging existing product usage data. The goal is not to cheat customers but to have authentic conversations with them. SaaS companies can drive 20-40% of sales revenue from expansion, and the fastest-growing companies see NRR rates over 120%. To improve NRR, companies can either reduce churn or promote expansion revenue. Product usage data isn't just for product teams; it's essential for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams to drive revenue. By leveraging product-qualified lead scoring, automating usage alerts, and delivering personalized marketing communications, companies can increase expansion revenue and drive more value for their customers across sales and marketing. The key is to tap into first- and third-party data sources, identify relevant feature signals, and trigger personalized messages at the right time. Companies like Figma, Docker, Crossbeam, and Canva are using these tactics to drive more authentic upsell conversations and expansion revenue.