MediaMarktSaturn Maximizes Data Access While Minimizing Customer Friction

Note: This story was originally published April 2024.

Challenge

MediaMarktSaturn’s Analytics Services Team faced a complex data governance challenge: how to manage data access requests at a massive scale while maintaining security and compliance. They needed to implement a scalable and auditable way to manage data access requests from thousands of employees, enabling them to run millions of monthly queries against petabytes of data.

The team was transitioning from a data mesh to a hub-and-spoke operating model to tackle complex governance challenges and address interoperability between 30+ domains. Their BigQuery infrastructure stored 7.5 petabytes of data and served an average of 8 million queries per month, making manual access management unsustainable.

They needed a solution that would enable data owners to define granular and compliant access control criteria while minimizing friction for data consumers requesting access.

“We believe the customer journey from really exploring, understanding, and then finally getting access to data should have one entry point.”

— Dieter Berwald, Competency Lead & Product Owner, MediaMarktSaturn

Solution

MediaMarktSaturn implemented DataHub as their central metadata platform to manage data discovery and access approval workflows. To meet their organization’s unique requirements, they developed comprehensive end-to-end workflows leveraging DataHub’s Actions Framework to orchestrate the entire request lifecycle from initial submission through final provisioning.

Automated workflow orchestration

MediaMarktSaturn built intelligent automation that handles key workflow transitions seamlessly. When data access requests are submitted, data owners receive automated email notifications prompting them to review and take action.

Upon approval, access is automatically granted in the source system (such as BigQuery), eliminating manual handoffs and reducing time-to-access for data consumers.

Granular access configuration

The team introduced a Data Access menu within DataHub that empowers data owners to configure how their assets are accessed and protected. Data owners can choose between manual or automatic approval processes and define fine-grained security settings through two key mechanisms:

1. Column-level security allows data owners to hide sensitive fields like addresses, emails, or social security numbers by default, requiring users to explicitly request access and provide justification
2. Row-level access enables requestors to access either the full dataset or only records matching specific criteria, such as limiting results to records where country equals “Germany”

Streamlined request experience

To minimize friction for data consumers, the team built the request workflow directly into DataHub’s interface using four structured steps: Who (specify users requiring access), Why (provide plain-language business justification), Security (request access to protected columns or filtered rows), and Confirmation (review details before submission).

Comprehensive management dashboard

The team created a custom Data Access Management Dashboard within DataHub that serves both data owners and consumers. Data owners can view assigned and submitted requests, sort by status (pending, approved, denied), access complete request details, and approve, deny, or request changes, all with full audit trails that track whether provisioning succeeded in the backend system. Simultaneously, data consumers can monitor the complete history and status of their requests, eliminating the need for manual check-ins with data owners.

This integrated approach between metadata discovery and automated access provisioning enables MediaMarktSaturn to manage data access at enterprise scale while maintaining strict compliance and operational transparency.

Impact

MediaMarktSaturn’s custom DataHub implementation enabled them to manage enterprise-scale data access efficiently and securely.

Key outcomes included:

• Centralized access management consolidating previously fragmented approval processes into a unified dashboard for data owners
• Scaled governance operations supporting thousands of employees making millions of monthly queries 
• Streamlined request workflow consolidating data discovery and access requests into a single platform, removing context switching between systems
• Reduced administrative overhead through automated email notifications and status tracking, freeing data owners from manual follow-ups and status inquiries
• Automated access provisioning eliminating manual handoffs between approval and system access granting, reducing time-to-access for data consumers
• Enhanced security compliance with granular column-level and row-level access controls protecting sensitive data 
• Improved audit transparency providing complete request history and provisioning status for compliance reviews across 30+ organizational domains