Work smarter, not harder. One underrated way to actually do that? Use alerts from your data platform.

Data Platforms

For these purposes, a Data Platform is a time-delayed copy of your production database. On a schedule, new data flows from production into the platform, where teams can safely run analyses that wouldn't make sense on the live environment.

Sometimes these are called Data Warehouses. They can do much more (transformations, pipelines, enrichment), but here I'll keep the focus on one feature: alerts.

The TLDR on Using Alerts

At Jiffy, we use Sisense for Cloud Data Teams. It's more than your average warehouse, but the feature I've found most impactful is the Query (SQL) Alert.

Here's how it works:

  • You write a SQL query.
  • The query runs on a schedule.
  • If new data is returned, the alert fires and notifies the right people.

This means that when something happens in production and the data syncs into the platform, your team hears about it, often within minutes.

The best part is that anyone who knows SQL and understands the data model can build alerts; it doesn't have to be Engineering. And with LLMs, it's getting even easier — you can upload your schema, describe what you need, and let the model write the query for you.

At Jiffy, I've taken the initiative to build these alerts for the team. It's been a fun ride getting back to my dev roots and, over time, digging into deeper data analysis on my way to becoming the organization's pseudo-data scientist.

Example 1: Operations

The Operations team at Jiffy is a small, passionate group that ensures our Professionals deliver the best possible service. A key part of their role is making sure pros understand how the platform works and stay current with best-practice policies.

Every so often, a pro who was once active goes dormant — maybe because they're busy with referrals or simply away on vacation. Eventually, many of them return and want to take on jobs again. During their time away, some of our policies or best practices may have changed, and they need to review these before working with homeowners.

Before alerts, we rarely knew when a dormant pro became active again. Too often, the first sign was a poor customer experience, because they didn't know to follow the new changes, which was already too late.

Now, alerts fire the moment a dormant pro accepts a job. Even if the service is scheduled a few days later, that window gives Operations time to reach out, review changes, and provide a refresher.

This shift from reactive to proactive action has led to fewer negative reviews and fewer complaints from reactivated pros.

Example 2: Sales

Our Sales team is responsible for finding and onboarding new professionals. To join Jiffy, a pro must provide three key pieces of information:

  • Banking details (so we can pay them)
  • Proof of insurance
  • References

Once these are in place, our team completes the final checks and the pro can start taking jobs.

For each sign-up, our internal admin tool shows a status panel that tracks how far they've progressed. In the past, Sales would manually check accounts to see who had completed their steps — a slow, repetitive process that became harder as the network grew.

Alerts simplified this. When a pro's profile shows banking info, insurance, and references complete, an alert is sent to Sales.

This lets the team react faster, reach out right away, and help new pros get started accepting jobs from the marketplace. The time once spent checking profiles is now spent activating one side of the marketplace — a much better use of effort, or as I like to say, working smarter.

Beyond Ops and Sales

These are just two examples. We also use alerts to:

  • Flag suspicious or policy-abusive behaviour
  • Track new pros in their early days
  • React to key customer events like missed chats

Our first instinct now, whenever a team needs to react to something, is: can we set up an alert for that? If the alert proves valuable, it becomes evidence for building a more permanent feature into the product.

Why Use Alerts?

Using your data platform's alerting capability brings clear benefits:

  1. Engineering stays focused on the roadmap.
  2. Alerts can link back to reports for context.
  3. Everything lives in one place, simplifying maintenance.
  4. You get more value from the platform you're already paying for.

If you're sitting on a data platform with alerting features, start small: pick one recurring problem, write a query, and try it.

You'll be surprised how quickly your teams shift from reacting to getting ahead.