Metabase: increasing connectivity across LendInvest

Good data is meaningless unless those able to make the best use of it can easily access it. Finding an easy way for non-engineering teams across the business to retrieve the data they need on their own is essential to streamlining internal processes. 

“The Fintech space is evolving rapidly. It’s packed with competitors all trying to get ahead of one another. Collecting and making the best use of your data to benefit the customer is key to succeeding in this environment.”

LendInvest software engineer Kenneth Barrett highlights one of the key tools that allows the business to utilise its data in the most convenient ways. 

Superior data access 

Metabase is an open source business intelligence tool, supported by an active community of developers. Well-designed data access and visualisation tools allow users to ask questions about their data and display answers in formats that make sense, whether in bar graphs or detailed tables. 

The results are then easy to save, organise, and share with others through a coherent and colourful dashboard. 

After an introduction to Metabase through one of LendInvest’s product managers who has been using the tool to acquire high-level statistics from one of our databases, it quickly became evident how incredibly useful Metabase could be for the internal functionality of our data warehouse. 

Data delivery to other teams had previously been a combination of lengthy uploads to team drives, “With most startups; systems grow organically, utilising the fastest/easiest solution at the time. As you scale, these processes become painful to track and manage.”

Increasing efficiency across teams  

Utilising accessible data tools virtually eliminates the need for engineers to serve as conduits between each business team and the data. This gives non-engineers the power to search data warehouses on their own, choose the best visual display for the results, and easily share their findings with others.

From product managers to the finance team, these tools are pivotal to speeding up and simplifying processes that allow the business to function at a truly competitive level. 

“The finance team needed a report showing loan redemptions by month over the last two years for a particular funding line owner. It took them less than a minute to select the relevant table, click a few filters and create the report.”

Carving out more time for innovation 

It’s not just non-engineers who benefit. The engineering team behind our loan calculation engine were able to quickly build a dashboard in Metabase that gives a live overview of any discrepancies in their data, broken down by categories, that they can then investigate and resolve.

“Tools that free us from reporting the same old stats every week and month, allow us time to truly innovate with our data, and gain fresh insights.”

Staying ahead of the curve on tools that give the team this freedom to remain agile and creative with solutions not only improves our decision making as a company, but simultaneously allows us to provide our customers the best experience possible.