onX eliminates API maintenance, saving resources and embracing automation for their data operations

Background

onX provides hundreds of thousands of outdoor enthusiasts with a smart GPS system on their smartphone that always works, even where there’s no cell service.

The onX Hunt app, together with onX Offroad and onX Backcountry, are the ultimate navigation systems for hunters, campers, off-road motorists, fishers, and other explorers.

The off-road maps detail 600,000 miles of interactive trails across the USA for 4×4, SxS, ATV, dirt bikes, and snowmobiles.

They also help users find opportunities to explore on public and other accessible lands, with an innovative mapping experience, contextual data, and guidebook content.

The Challenge

The business intelligence team at onX was struggling with a number of decentralized data systems and manual tasks that were heavily time-consuming and expending valuable resources.

Team members were spending most of their hours finding and preparing data from disparate sources – which they were unable to combine – and producing reports which had gaps and deficiencies.

Due to this manual process, they lacked the right resources to handle key backend tasks associated with data pipeline maintenance, and they needed to find an automated data management solution as a result.

“We were always fishing for data before Rivery,” said Sarah Linkenhoker, Project Manager at onX. “Our main report used to be based off of a massive Excel file with no dashboarding.”

“We needed a data connector for a certain distribution platform, but most ELT providers did not offer one. Before Rivery, we built this data pipeline ourselves. But the pipeline kept breaking, and it wasn’t scalable. So finding a provider that offered this data connector was essential.”

Initially, Linkenhoker and onX tried a different ELT platform, but the results weren’t up to par, so they kept looking until they discovered Rivery.

The Solution

Rivery became the missing piece of the jigsaw that now empowers onX to take complete control of all their data, from extraction to visualization, while also serving as the foundation to create scalable internal data processes.

onX was already using Google BigQuery as a fully-managed cloud data warehouse, together with Tableau as its visualization platform, to generate incisive business intelligence. What Rivery now brings to the table is the necessary tech that allows onX to stop worrying about data management, and to start focusing on actionable data analysis.

Rivery comes with 200+ pre-built data connectors right out of the box, plus Logic Rivers, Rest API functionality, version control, and more. Rivery’s fully-managed data connectors are one of the core reasons why onX switched to Rivery. These empower onX to easily connect their data sources in a few clicks and automatically update to API changes, which results in significant time and resource savings for onX.

Rivery also offers several niche data connectors and Rest API functionality, which allows onX to connect to any API as a data source.

The migration to Rivery was seamless for onX, with no interruption to the company’s data flow. With the benefit of what Linkenhoker describes as Rivery’s “proactive communication,” the onX team is able to quickly address problems in real-time, and avoid costly, time-consuming bugs.

“Rivery, BigQuery, and Tableau enabled us to harness our data, wherever it worked best for us,” said Linkenhoker, allowing their team to execute more ambitious data initiatives.

The Outcome

“With Rivery, our team spends less time looking for data, and more time analyzing it,” said Linkenhoker. “This ability to have so many options for accessing and analyzing data is such a huge deal for our data team.”

“We can do what we want with our data in Rivery, just as we can do what we want with our data in BigQuery. And we can rely on Tableau to generate amazing insights”

As soon as Rivery was up and running, onX was able to increase the depth, volume, and quality of data in their BigQuery data warehouse. Rivery loads data straight into BigQuery, rather than transforming it first as other ETL solutions would.

“Rivery upped our data game a lot,” said Linkenhoker. “If we can get data into BigQuery, we can do so much more with it.”

Rivery transforms the data directly inside BigQuery itself, allowing onX to import data faster, providing their teams with all the solutions they need to generate deeper reporting insights for key projects and decision making.

Rivery’s Logic Rivers bring a new level of automation to onX’s data operation. The onX team can now send data between its online store and its sales system using a Rivery Logic River, combined with Rivery’s Rest API capabilities.

Using Logic Rivers, onX now automatically passes data from their online store to BigQuery, then the Logic River executes prewritten SQL queries inside BigQuery to transform the data into a format that the sales system can easily process. After that, the transformed data seamlessly populates into the sales system via the sale system’s Rest API.

“With Rivery, we built a data flow between our online store and our sales system,” said Linkenhoker. “They’re connected because our fulfillment team has to monitor both platforms. Using a Logic River, we pulled data out of our online store, and then plugged it into our sales system using the Rest API. This allowed us to send receipts back and forth, giving our team a more efficient workflow, and helping our different data systems communicate with each other.”

In addition, the version control feature of Logic Rivers means onX wastes zero time rewriting or excavating several long and complex SQL queries. This saves the team time and resources, allowing them to focus on more important tasks and driving actionable insights.

“Logic Rivers were a big win for us,” said Linkenhoker. “In particular, we had a report that tracked marketing spend performance across all channels. The report was anchored by a monster query in BigQuery, one that was very difficult to change and update. Once I put the query into a Logic River, I could break down the steps, and rely on version control when systems changed or pivoted. The whole data integration process was automated — I didn’t have to worry about any of it.”

Expanding on Rivery’s Rest API capabilities is now at the top of Linkenhoker’s list for the near future. “With Rest API support, there are a lot of business problems we could solve,” she said. “Or, perhaps they’re being addressed in an inefficient, manual way. As the company grows, we need to scale these kinds of projects. The need for the Rest API support will become greater and greater.”