International financial services firm, SWBC, set out to modernize its fragmented data stack into a centralized, governed, and AI-enabled platform built to deliver faster, smarter insights to both internal teams and their clients. In under six months, with the help of phData’s data & AI services, they migrated to Snowflake and consolidated use cases from various BI tools into Omni, enhancing internal decision-making and reducing time spent on manual processes. As part of an organization-wide AI strategy, they’re also using Omni to deliver more value to clients and unlock long-term differentiation by developing a new customer-facing data product: SWBC Insights.
Grant van Servellen, SVP of Product Finance & Analytics, and Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions, led the self-service and customer-facing initiative. “My team is all about using data to better serve our clients and increase efficiency,” Austin says. “We’re responsible for providing insights to our partners across the business, which includes: running market analysis, identifying revenue optimization opportunities, and giving visibility into operational activities.”
“When evaluating vendors, we look for true partnership. From a cultural standpoint, Omni is a great partner. It’s not transactional; working with Omni is collaborative and thoughtful. Omni has a great tool, but it has even better people.” Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions
Results #
Migrated data stack — including consolidating use cases from multiple BI tools onto Omni and delivered governed, self-service analytics to 100% of internal executive, product, and sales users in under 6 months
Reduced time spent on manual processes to improve data team productivity by over 30%
Leveraged dbt Copilot and Omni’s dbt integration to quickly deliver context-rich AI recommendations to business stakeholders
Built foundation for the development of competitive differentiation with a new product, SWBC Insights, to offer clients more robust reporting
Essential to their Data Stack #
The Challenge #
Previously, SWBC's data environment was rife with disparate tools; teams relied on a mixture of Domo, PowerBI, TIBCO WebFOCUS, Looker, and Tableau. With no centralized governance, metrics were inconsistent, which slowed down decision-making and legacy client-facing reporting.
“We had nearly every BI tool, yet none of them handled governance well. Everyone was asking, 'Whose numbers are right?' Over time, untangling the mess became exhausting.”Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions
This fragmentation led to:
Inconsistent reporting: Conflicting data definitions across (and within) tools reduced trust in data.
Governance concerns: The lack of a centralized data model and governed development processes created more work for the data team to ensure all tools met their strict security and compliance standards.
Limited self-service: Internal business stakeholders relied heavily on the data team for insights, which slowed down decision-making.
The Evaluation Process #
"We needed stronger governance as the foundation for robust reporting and reliable AI outputs. Many BI tools promise self-service and embedded analytics, but very few actually deliver it with real governance," noted Austin.
Rather than adding a new tool into the mix, Austin set out to find the right BI partner to centralize all their use cases for internal and client-facing reporting. During the evaluation, his key criteria included:
Strong governance to ensure consistent metrics & secure access
One platform for internal & external reporting
AI-enabled exploration to align with their broader AI strategy & provide competitive differentiation
Integrations with key elements in their data stack, including Snowflake and dbt
A responsive team that would work alongside them
The Solution #
After evaluating several tools, including Sigma and Tableau, Austin and his team decided Omni was the best partner to provide an end-to-end solution for all of their needs.
Omni checked every box:
Built-in semantic model ensures governance, metric accuracy, consistency, & compliance
Flexible UI allows users to interact with governed metrics in a way that’s most comfortable for them, including 1:1 Excel syntax for their finance users & AI chat interface for executives
Customizable embedded analytics allow SBWC to build a branded data product with multiple tiers to meet varying client needs
Bi-directional integration with dbt enables the team to leverage all their dbt tables and definitions, and surface metadata directly to end users, without creating repeat work
Responsive, customer-first partnership provides immediate Slack support and strategic guidance on roadmap and data strategy
“We saw Omni's pink booth at a conference and had to learn more. It quickly became clear Omni could meet all our requirements from a technology and a partnership perspective. It goes further than just BI – it’s an analytics platform, and it does so much more than any tool we had or evaluated. Omni actually allows anyone to do work in a self-service and secure way that our data team can trust and be comfortable with.”Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions
The Migration #
With the new components of their data stack selected, SWBC partnered with phData to help with the migration. “phData helped us stand up our entire Snowflake architecture. We had such a positive experience with phData that we decided to work with them on migrating and building out our Omni instance. And once again, they knocked it out of the park,” Austin described.
In less than half the time they originally planned, phData helped SWBC:
Centralize data storage on Snowflake: Consolidating data into a single, scalable warehouse
Transform data with dbt: Migrating legacy SQL scripts from Domo into dbt
Enable company-wide data access: Implementing Omni for governed, self-service analytics
“We initially planned for a lift-and-shift from our previous tools. But Omni was so intuitive, we ended up building enhancements. In six months, we didn’t just migrate — we improved.”Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions
The Impact #
dbt <> Omni integration expedites the development of AI context to provide helpful recommendations #
Using dbt Copilot and Omni’s AI, Austin’s team delivered domain-specific recommendations without requiring much manual work from their team.
“We were honestly surprised at how accurate Omni’s AI is out of the box, and we wanted to see how much better it could get with more context. So we started using the Omni <> dbt integration to accelerate how we add metadata for AI,” shares Austin. “Every time we're going to deploy, we run the table through dbt Copilot to get a high-level summary and documentation, which automatically gets ingested by Omni’s AI. If we need to tweak or add to the metadata, it’s quick. We’re able to get reliable AI responses without requiring tons of effort from my team.”
During their product onboarding, executives asked Omni’s AI for strategic suggestions. “Our product and customer success executives immediately prompted Omni’s AI to act like a domain expert in our field and identify opportunities for revenue growth, and they were shocked at the quality of the response!” exclaims Austin.
“Omni’s AI answered like a consultant and provided recommendations that aligned with a proposal our team was already pursuing. It validated the AI’s capabilities and helped us build stakeholder confidence — giving our stakeholders confidence and strengthening alignment around SWBC’s AI vision.”Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions
Building competitive differentiation with SWBC Insights #
Austin’s team is also building a new client-facing data product powered by Omni: SWBC Insights. SWBC’s clients expect regular updates on the status of their product performance through their client portal, and any ad hoc requests previously required the sales, product, and customer success teams to manually pull reports together.
With Omni, clients will be able to access reports and dashboards on demand directly from SWBC’s portal and subscribe to receive automated email reports — helping them stay informed and make faster decisions without relying on ad hoc requests. This makes it easier for clients to securely access accurate metrics while saving teams across SWBC hours of manual work each month.
SWBC Insights will offer clients multiple tiers of data access, from view-only dashboards to self-service exploration — with plans to introduce AI-driven insights for their most data-savvy users over time. Each tier will provide clients with more data access and dynamic reporting than they’ve had access to before. This also opens up new potential revenue streams for the SWBC team while deepening their commitment to serving their customers.
“We want to meet our clients where they’re comfortable. We’ve offered very legacy reporting for a long time, and with Omni we can take them from seeing flat tables to dynamic dashboards and AI-powered self-service. Now, we’re able to turn data into a strategic asset for our clients. We’re really excited to unlock so much more for them.”Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions
Enhanced efficiency and strategic value #
Since partnering with phData to consolidate legacy BI use cases onto Omni, SWBC has significantly enhanced productivity:
Time savings: Activities that previously took days now take just a few hours, improving data team productivity by over 30%.
Rapid adoption: Achieved 100% migration adoption within six months.“I have new hires building Omni dashboards during their first month. We couldn’t do that with any other BI tool,” explains Austin.
Strategic alignment: Data has become a core component of SWBC's product offerings, enhancing both internal operations and client services.
“Working with Omni is fast, efficient, and fun. We were looking for a long-term partner to help us better serve our clients, and we found one.”Austin Aranda, Director of Data Solutions