Semantic Layer
Ensure consistency and reliability in your business metrics.
Structured’s Semantic Layer is the core feature that ensures your business metrics are consistently defined, managed, and applied across your organization. By leveraging a semantic layer, Structured transforms how you interact with data, turning complex and disparate datasets into a unified, reliable source of truth.
What is a Semantic Layer?
Unified Metric Definitions
The semantic layer enables you to define business metrics such as CAC, MRR, and Churn Rate in a consistent manner. These definitions are shared across all departments, ensuring that everyone in the organization works with the same understanding of these metrics.
Data Integration and Transformation
It integrates data from various sources and applies transformation rules to convert raw data into meaningful metrics. For example, it can aggregate data from marketing, finance, and product departments to compute a standardized CAC.
Governance and Control
The semantic layer supports robust governance by tracking changes to metric definitions. It includes version control, allowing you to revert to previous versions if needed, and assigns metric ownership to specific teams or individuals.
Consistency Across Tools
By providing a centralized definition of metrics, the semantic layer ensures that every tool and platform in your organization uses the same metric definitions, whether it’s a BI tool, CRM, or custom application.
How the Semantic Layer Works
Connect and Centralize Data
Structured connects to your cloud data warehouse and integrates with various data sources within your organization. The platform ingests this data into the semantic layer, where it is mapped according to your business rules and metric definitions.
Define and Manage Metrics
Define your key business metrics within the semantic layer by specifying how each metric should be calculated, which data sources to use, and what business rules to apply. This ensures consistent metric calculations across the organization.
Governance and Version Control
Govern your metrics through robust version control, ensuring that any changes are tracked, with clear records of who made changes and why. This maintains trust and integrity in your business metrics.
Real-time Data Transformation
The semantic layer continuously applies business rules and transformations as data flows into the system, updating your metrics in real-time and ensuring that your business decisions are based on the most current data.
Consistent Metric Application
All departments and tools in your organization use the same metrics, ensuring consistency in reports, dashboards, and analysis. This unified approach eliminates the common problem of conflicting numbers.
Benefits of the Semantic Layer
Real-World Example
Imagine your company’s marketing, finance, and product teams each define Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) differently. Marketing excludes overhead costs, finance includes them, and product focuses on ad spend only. The semantic layer in Structured allows you to define CAC once, integrating all relevant data sources and applying consistent business rules. Now, when the CEO asks for the CAC, all departments report the same number, ensuring aligned decision-making.
Conclusion
The semantic layer is the cornerstone of Structured’s platform, transforming how organizations manage, govern, and utilize business metrics. By ensuring consistency, enhancing governance, and enabling real-time data transformation, the semantic layer empowers your organization to make data-driven decisions with confidence and clarity.