AgileData

His business partner Nigel Vining also resets in nature, escaping his home office fifteen minutes from Shane’s. Only, the data engineer does it on a jet ski, launching off the beach and circling Kapiti Island, before grabbing coffee from his local coffee cart and returning to his ‘tech cave’ to work.

It’s the kind of lifestyle the pair wouldn’t go without now they’ve experienced the benefits of running a business remotely from the tranquil coast.

A global scale business that’s the first in New Zealand and Australia to have a Google BigQuery validated product, in fact.

From Kāpiti, the pair - known for bringing ‘magical simplicity’ to complex data - help industries collect, store, and analyse their data through a web application.

They also run their AgileData Network, which removes the barrier of isolation for remote data consultants, who are invited to tap in for knowledge sharing and collaboration from anywhere in the world at any time.

“Nigel and I purposely built our company to be remote and we are lucky enough to live and work from the place we love,” says Shane, a podcaster and AgileData Coach, who works with industries including insurance, energy, banking, and government.

“Everything you need is here, and it’s relaxed. Being by the sea and bush brings a feeling you don't get anywhere else in the world.”

When he and Nigel launched AgileData in 2019, they brought a combined 50+ years sector experience, including working with major international data and analytics software companies.

Often, they saw businesses struggle with complex data and wondered, ‘How can we solve it? Why does it have to be hard?’

“Every organisation has their data stored in more than seven different systems and with that comes mess and the risk of duplicates. A business could have an email, financial system, HR system for people and salaries, and a website. To get value out of data, you have to take it out of those systems and put it together,” Shane explains.

“Nigel and I were brought into rescue projects within large government or corporate organisations that weren’t going so well.”

One rescue project was the catalyst for the pair’s desire to create an AgileData app, after they witnessed tens of millions of dollars spent without results.

While having data in one location is a game changer, they knew it was only the first step. Working with data also requires a coding skillset, which many small to medium businesses don’t have and can’t afford in-house.

“Previously, I had a data services consulting company that grew to about 20 employees. But I didn't like that it wasn't a reusable product,” says Shane, who founded the multi-million-dollar business in 2008.

“I wanted to build one and Nigel is incredibly focused on reusability, so we engineered a low-code app.”

The product puts the magic of Google Cloud and data engineering into users’ hands, enabling businesses to explore data quickly and independently. Using simple business language and easy data flow maps and catalogues, the app cuts out the middleman - aka, the need to hire costly data engineers.

“There’s a low level of data fluency in the world and our app is important because users can see everything we do and start doing it themselves. But because we're still a software as a service, clients pay subscription pricing to use it.”

AgileData followed a rigorous validation process to have its app certified on BigQuery, a data analytics platform.

“A bunch of experts from the Google BigQuery team went through our product and found very little we needed to change. It means our customers know Google has taken us through quite a strenuous exercise to make sure we work optimally with BigQuery,” Shane says.

“Nigel and I were like, ‘Good, we're doing the right job here!’ Everybody's got a data problem and we solve and simplify it from here in Kapiti.”