A Thanksgiving Case Study: Fortune 250 Financial Institution’s Data Reliability Breakthrough with Pantomath

Prior to implementing Pantomath, a Fortune 250 financial institution (for this case study we will refer to them as “FinTech1”) faced a critical data reliability incident right during the Thanksgiving holiday. This is one of the busiest transactional periods in the U.S. with over $964.4 billion spent on Black Friday alone. FinTech1's data teams worked tirelessly for 3.5 days to address the issue, sacrificing time with their friends and family. They knew a change was needed.

Enter Pantomath. With its end-to-end data observability platform, FinTech1 transformed its approach to data reliability. They drastically reduced issue detection and resolution times, while ensuring only the right teams were alerted. This breakthrough not only strengthened compliance under complex financial regulations but also positioned FinTech1 to better support customers and employees during their most critical operational moments.

"Pantomath has redefined our approach to data reliability. With end-to-end pipeline monitoring, we've significantly reduced time spent firefighting and increased our focus on core business initiatives. This has had a direct impact on our ability to support customers and make data-driven decisions." – Senior Data Leader @ FinTech1

The Challenge (Before Pantomath)

A Fortune 250 financial institution found itself vulnerable to data failures, especially during mission-critical times like the holidays. With legacy systems deeply intertwined with modern tools, identifying the root cause of issues often required manually retracing thousands of jobs and datasets.

This reactive approach hit a breaking point when a failure caused critical delays forcing teams to spend 3.5 days over Thanksgiving fixing the issues instead of spending valuable time with their families. A fragmented view of data pipelines lay at the heart of the failure. While the data team monitored individual components – ingestion jobs, Snowflake warehouses, Tableau dashboards – they lacked a holistic perspective. Their vertical monitoring approach left them blind to the interconnected nature of their data flows. They couldn’t escape the cycle of case-by-case manual troubleshooting and reactive problem-solving.

As data volumes grew and regulatory scrutiny intensified, the risks became too high. FinTech1 recognized that their current operations were unsustainable and needed a transformative solution.

The Process (Partnering with Pantomath)

After being drawn to Pantomath's end-to-end approach, FinTech1 embarked on this pivotal partnership. Unlike other data observability platforms, Pantomath doesn’t just point out data volume or data freshness issues, Pantomath detects issues and then advises on how to resolve those issues, including which upstream and downstream jobs teams need to re-run.

The implementation process, despite FinTech1’s stringent security and architecture reviews, was remarkably seamless on the technical front. Pantomath's team worked to integrate across FinTech1’s complex stack and by only using metadata, Pantomath instantly mapped FinTech1’s entire data ecosystem, creating clear lineage graphs that illuminated previously hidden connections.

Once activated, Pantomath's proactive monitoring set the stage for a comprehensive transformation.

The Results (Success with Pantomath)

The implementation of Pantomath brought immediate, transformative results:

• Proactive Issue Detection: Issues were identified and resolved before reaching end users. Only relevant teams received alerts, drastically reducing noise and improving focus.
• Reduced MTTD and MTTR: Detection and resolution times shrank from days to hours, eliminating the need for prolonged firefighting.
• Improved Employee Success: Teams now spend less time reacting to crises and more time focusing on strategic, high-value work. This shift has improved morale, increased productivity, and streamlined operations across the organization.
• Regulatory Compliance: Accurate, timely data reporting reduced exposure to compliance risks and fines.
• Customer Satisfaction: With fewer data incidents, customers experienced smoother operations, even during high-stress periods like Thanksgiving.

Looking to the future, FinTech1 sees its partnership with Pantomath as a key element in maintaining its competitive edge. In an industry where data is currency, FinTech1 now has the tools to ensure that its data remains a true driver of business value.

If you are looking to explore your own data transformation and would like to learn more, schedule a demo with Pantomath’s expert team.

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