The fitness industry has faced a significant transformation post-COVID. Not only are people looking for the ability to work out where they want, when they want — a trend known as “hybrid” fitness — but they’re also looking for a more holistic approach to health that integrates mental wellness and mindful eating with exercise. McKinsey estimates that the global wellness industry is worth at least $1.5 trillion and is set to grow by 5-10% yearly.
This has created a market for an entirely new type of fitness product. To support these trends, BODi (formerly known as Beachbody Company), has significantly adapted its data strategy to focus on delivering a positive and personalized customer experience.
Heading up this transformation is Aarthi Sridharan, Vice President of Data Insights and Analytics at BODi. She joined us on a recent podcast episode of Data Drip to share what she learned from her experience building a data foundation for BODi’s customer 360.
“It's very important to help the customer throughout their fitness journey because, after all, a fitness journey is just not just one or two days. It's a lifetime thing,” Sridharan says.
Lessons learned from large-scale infrastructure modernization
To get a 360-degree view of customers, Aarthi’s team needed to build a foundation that centralized data from three separate on-premises data warehouses into one central warehouse in the cloud.
“We had a data warehouse to house customer information and order management information, and we had to create a second data warehouse to host streaming data,” adds Sridharan. “We had a third data lake to house the social media data, web analytics data and so forth.”
Aarthi and her team underwent a multi-year initiative to comprehensively transform their data infrastructure. They inventoried tables, ETL jobs, reports and downstream applications, tested the migration with a smaller data warehouse before rolling it out across the board and built custom analytics solutions to execute the reports and dashboards they needed.
Aarthi shares these key pieces of advice for other enterprises that want to overhaul their data operations.
Get buy-in from your leadership team
Before embarking on a modernization project, securing buy-in from leadership is crucial. Involving stakeholders early on — up to the C-suite — and communicating important milestones and goals is key to ensuring that the new system is supported, embraced and used across the organization. “Because data cuts across the organization, you want all your C-suite employees to support you in this journey,” says Sridharan.
Plan a phased approach
Break down the project into manageable phases and milestones. Start by moving one data warehouse and its associated applications, then learn and apply the experiences and feedback in subsequent phases. This method makes complex data migration processes more efficient and reduces the risk of overwhelming team members and systems.
Be flexible — multi-year projects can change along the way
When COVID-19 hit, Aarthi’s team had to make significant shifts in project scope and direction. It’s essential to stay flexible and adapt to changing requirements and priorities, especially for large-scale, multi-year projects. Regularly assess goals and resources and adjust accordingly.
Account for more time to do data validation
Initially, Aarthi’s team underestimated the effort required for data validation, especially when serving multiple departments. Allocate sufficient time and resources for thorough and precise data validation, particularly for departments that rely on exact figures like accounting. “You want data validation and data reconciliation to be done down to the penny,” adds Sridharan.
Listen to the podcast for the full story
Complex, multi-year infrastructure projects come with equally complex challenges that can stifle a company’s attempt to respond to today’s demand for personalized, flexible fitness workouts.
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