Slashing Data Management Overhead By 90%: How Plainsight Streamlined Vision Data Pipelines with Encord

Introducing Customer: Plainsight Technologies

Plainsight Technologies is the enterprise vision data company that makes your cameras count. Plainsight Vision Data Filters help companies use real-world visual data to improve bottom lines through cutting-edge AI-powered Computer Vision applications. Filters generate business-critical data and feed it directly into Enterprise data systems in order to take action and perform analysis. 

Problem: Struggles with in-house built data pipelines

Plainsight's mission to provide an application framework for computer vision was hindered by challenges in their data management and annotation processes. Initially, they invested in building their own end-to-end management and annotation pipelines. However, their homegrown solutions fell short of their desired standard and required significant resources to maintain and update, distracting the team from their core objective.

Additionally, Plainsight needed a solution that respected data privacy and could handle the granular segmentation of customer data, as their customer's training data is proprietary and highly sensitive.

Solution: Utilising Encord for an end-to-end data development platform

To address these challenges, Plainsight made a strategic decision to discontinue their internal management and annotation tooling. They sought an external solution that could meet their specific needs. After evaluating several options, they chose Encord as their provider.

Encord offered a comprehensive, industry-leading data development platform that integrated seamlessly with Plainsight's existing data pipelines. The platform enabled high-level data management and discoverability capabilities, granular annotation features, and strong data curation functionality required to run efficient data pipelines.

Kit (CEO, Plainsight) says, “Before using Encord, it was challenging to see all the data, projects, and annotations in one place. I constantly had to ask questions to understand what was going on. Now, with Encord I feel like we have a much clearer understanding of everything that's happening.”

The Plainsight team specifically mentioned the automated annotation tooling, notably the SAM 2 model, as a key improvement over their previous set-up.

By partnering with Encord, Plainsight was able to focus on its core mission without the challenges of managing in-house data pipelines.

Results: Reduced data management complexity by 90% and annotation costs by 50%.

The adoption of Encord led to significant improvements for Plainsight and their customers:

• Streamlined Cloud Bucket Management: Reduced from 14 buckets per customer to 1 bucket per customer by using Encord folder structures, cutting bucket management complexity by over 90%.
• Faster Project Setup and Workflow Efficiency: Reduced labeling project setup time from 1 day to 1-2 hours and simplified data export processes.
• Increased Annotation Efficiency and Cost Savings: Encord’s Automated Labeling Suite, including tools like SAM 2 assisted labeling, boosted annotator productivity, reduced manual annotation time and costs by approximately 50%.
• Direct Export to Model Training: Direct export of labeled data to their model training programs remove the need for intermediary storage.

Plainsight is now able to focus on their strategic priorities instead of struggling with their underperforming and complex in-house tools. The leadership team has full oversight of all their data and is empowered to build optimal data pipelines and models for their customers, accelerating the process of bringing structured data to cameras worldwide.