Nice post.
Looker (http://looker.com) is an alternative to Periscope that a ton of venture-backed tech companies are using (mostly in conjunction with Redshift). Here are two posts from Buffer and SeatGeek on their stacks using Redshift, Luigi and Looker. Buffer: https://overflow.bufferapp.com/2014/10/31/buffers-new-data-a.... SeatGeek: http://chairnerd.seatgeek.com/building-out-the-seatgeek-data...
Looker does not necessitate each member of the team to know SQL to explore the data or create reports. It also has a text-based modeling language that is a thin abstraction layer of SQL. It makes SQL modular and reusable making it far more efficient to support a wide range of analysis. It's more expensive than Periscope, but it's way more powerful.