/
stories.json
65 lines (65 loc) · 48.8 KB
/
stories.json
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
[
{
"id": 1,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/tinuiti-centralizes-marketing-data-in-tableau-prep-scales-marketing-analytics",
"title": "Marketing agency Tinuiti centralises data sources, scales marketing analytics",
"company": "Tinuiti",
"content": "Tinuiti, North America’s largest independent performance and data-driven digital marketing agency with more than $1 billion in managed ad spend, develops strategic media plans for more than 500 clients. Brands such as Tommy Bahama, Eddie Bauer and Brooks Running rely on Tinuiti to combine channel data analytics and marketing science with an integrated media strategy. However, a complicated landscape of marketing technologies and data sources made it difficult for Tinuiti to quickly analyse information so that media is fully optimised for one-to-one client marketing. Tinuiti adopted Tableau, helping staff make sense of all channel-level data and reducing time spent on data reporting, collection, and preparation by 60 per cent. They centralised data from more than 100 sources with the help of ChannelMix by Alight Analytics and created a scalable, repeatable, cost-effective and automated reporting infrastructure through Tableau, which satisfies customer needs, increases staff and analytics effectiveness, and enhances client relationships. With the Tableau platform, including Tableau Prep, the Tinuiti analytics team quickly pulls data from a complex mix of digital channels and creates custom, flexible dashboards for customers so they see the full story of their brand efforts. They also deliver bespoke and templated reports so clients’ marketing departments can self-explore data, investigate underlying details and make better decisions that improve brand engagement. Tableau connects to cloud-hosted marketing data in Amazon Redshift and provides high-performance, secure dashboards for both customers and Tinuiti teams so questions and needs are addressed immediately. In-turn, marketing budget is allocated to the best media tactics that create the strongest engagement. With so many marketing sources, Tinuiti was overwhelmed trying to ingest, clean, combine and provide actionable data reports to its customers. The agency used a painstaking manual process to pull and transform information, but struggled to put timely, dynamic marketing reports in customers’ hands, which also increased the burden to analytics staff, resulting in over 156,000 hours spent on data reporting annually. Customers wanted near real-time analytics, and without it, marketing resources couldn’t be directed at timely multi-channel tactics. Tinuiti adopted Tableau and found instant value with Tableau Prep. Tableau Prep cut the time Tinuiti spent cleaning, combining and shaping their data all while increasing capacity of the channel and analytics teams. Powered by APIs connected to Amazon Redshift that extract almost 600 GB of cloud-hosted marketing data, Tinuiti has created an automated reporting Prep flow that uses clean data from major marketing platforms for functions such as automated email attachments, social media and digital advertising. “For us to have access to a tool like Tableau Prep has given us the ability to go faster and do it at scale across multiple channels,” explained Andrew Richardson. And now with Tableau Prep Conductor, the Tinuiti teams are able to schedule and manage self-service data preparation at scale, Andrew shared: “We’re thrilled to try it and expect it will help us automate and scale data prep across the company even more than we have today.” They recognise it will speed up their ability to report on campaigns for clients, increasing the value provided, which also helps their bottom line. The new approach using a combination of ChannelMix and Tableau for automated, flexible, and scalable data analysis allows Tinuiti to deliver strategic value that nurtures strong, lasting client relationships. Clients such as Big 5 Sporting Goods recognise that having this comprehensive view of their channel marketing data greatly impacts their business and enables better spend of their marketing dollars. There’s considerable nuance to marketing campaigns and data reporting. Each marketing tactic requires careful consideration and planning with varying KPIs and goals. Tinuiti understands that not every customer is analytically minded and data savvy, but it was also challenging with a smaller analytics staff to serve the different channel teams and easily answer customers’ questions. Some of their complex questions included: what’s the lifetime value of our customers, what segments should I go after, or how can I predictively forecast for the future when I’m used to making decisions with gut feel? Tableau’s drag-and-drop functionality and multiple data filters made it easier for Tinuiti’s analytics team to accelerate work in areas that weren’t possible before. With a vast number of e-commerce clients, Tinuiti created a flexible dashboard for them and its internal teams where anyone can adjust the profile, report name, type of chart, timeframes and other parameters to compare data; it’s often available right after they start with Tinuiti. The analytics team also created a pacing report where channel teams monitor digital advertising budgets for brands so they can monitor daily spending rates and track over and under-spending. Even Tinuiti staff who weren’t considered data experts are now clamouring to get Tableau and perform their own analysis instead of relying on the analytics team. And with all dashboards hosted in the cloud, always on and available 24/7, internal and client staff (including executives) can check on their digital marketing data whenever they choose. As Andrew explained, “If we didn’t have Tableau, we would be behind where we are today and need more staff to do the same amount of work.” These consumable, dynamic dashboards are “making a really big difference for us and our customers.” Now, Tinuiti can focus more on telling the interesting stories behind clients’ multi-channel data and deliver more value. The marketing landscape changes too quickly and both customers and the Tinuiti teams that serve them can’t wait on quarterly updates to make better business decisions. “We ended up choosing Tableau because of the efficiency that we gained with dashboarding as well as what we were going to see in data exploration,” said Andrew. In fact, generating analytics on the spot – both in preparation for and during client meetings – means Tinuiti can better collaborate with and influence clients by having one source of truth that’s easy to understand and manage, and leads to better customer outcomes. Brooks Running, another Tinuiti customer, lauded how their use of Tableau creates business value for them: \"The Tinuiti team have gone above and beyond to create dashboards that are not only actionable but also beautiful by design! The analytics team have been a pleasure to work with throughout the process and even helped us learn and grow in our own Tableau knowledge. We very much appreciate their hard work and expertise as the dashboards have helped take our business to the next level.” Tinuiti has a marketing science team that uses Tableau forecasting to perform predictive analytics for clients, looking out at least six months. When clients head into annual planning, the agency is prepared with a report showing the year ahead based on historical analysis. This can be applied to display, email marketing, paid social and search, and more. Eventually, Tinuiti has plans to build in predictive analytics at scale so forecasting is part of every client dashboard built. What-if analyses are another concentration for Tinuiti as they expand their capabilities. Leveraging the power of Tableau and integration with R has also allowed for better, time series analysis and media forecasting in conjunction with these what-if analyses. In Tableau, they can answer client questions like “If I had more money to give you, what would that look like?” Plus, with past data reflected in the analytics, clients and Tinuiti staff have the option to compare actual sales with forecast sales and adjust results by changing new business growth and expected customer churn rates."
},
{
"id": 2,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/gulf-banks-data-literacy-programmes-boost-business-and-wider-community-kuwait",
"title": "Gulf Bank’s data literacy programmes boost business and the wider community in Kuwait",
"company": "Gulf Bank",
"content": "Data literacy is delivering benefits to the Gulf Bank but also the wider society of Kuwait, where the bank operates from. As one of Kuwait's major lending banks, Gulf Bank has begun a data-focused modernisation. Whilst hackathons are ensuring its customers and citizens gain data literacy. \"We have a vision that we want to be data-driven, and in order to be data-driven, we need everyone in the bank to be data literate,\" says Mai AlOwaish, Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Gulf Bank. She joined the bank in 2021 to form the data and innovation office, which is part of the bank's 2025 vision to be the leading bank in Kuwait. AlOwaish says the data literacy vision is aimed at everyone at every level of the bank, from branch employees to the C-suite executives. \"At the bank, we believe that data literacy is key for the digital transformation of Kuwait overall. We built our own data literacy programme here at the bank, and we have extended that to the community by performing the datathon,\" AlOwaish says of how the Gulf Bank saw that its own data journey could be beneficial to its nation and founded a nationwide hackathon. \"Datathon is a countrywide competition that includes training on Tableau and also the teaching of data concepts. This is one of several steps that we provide to our community with skills and challenges to help future generations achieve our sustainability goals and strengthen our economy,\" AlOwaish says. \"We intend to run the datathon annually after the success of the first edition. We were so proud to see a diverse audience after the success of the first one, including a large number of youths and women,\" she says. One attendee, Laila Ali, says of attending the datathon: \"After doing the data workshop with the Gulf Bank team, I started to learn more. What I love about Tableau is that I am fascinated by human behaviour, and it helps you understand people by looking at trends. \"Learning Tableau was not difficult; it is a very intuitive tool,\" she says. \"I think soon enough we will be asking for people with data analytics skills as a basic skill, just like we ask people if they can use a computer,\" AlOwaish says. This is why creating data literacy beyond the bank was important, and how these skills are becoming vital to society as well as financial services providers. Internally, the Gulf Bank began developing its data literacy by initially focusing on the bank's business analysts and then rolling out data literacy across the entire bank. AlOwaish says now everybody in the bank knows their responsibilities and role towards data. \"We make sure that employees in all departments have the correct concepts on data and they have the correct tools,\" adds Fouzan Al Sumait, Gulf Bank Data Science Lead. In the 12 months since the Gulf Bank introduced data literacy, the bank already sees business benefits. AlOwaish says self-service access to data is \"empowering our data and business analysts\" and reducing bottlenecks that previously existed as all the data demand was placed on the data science team. \"Tableau helped us to centralise all our analytics into one place. So there is no more waiting for data; everyone is looking in the same place for insight,\" she says of how the Gulf Bank has achieved a single version of the truth. AlOwaish and the Gulf Bank have delivered data literacy to their colleagues at a rapid pace, and in doing so, it has also extended the data literacy skills of its society. In just one year, the Bank of Gulf is seeing business benefits which improve the bank and prove the importance of data literacy."
},
{
"id": 3,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/st-georges-hospital-uses-tableau-cut-patient-waiting-times-and-optimise-clinical",
"title": "St George’s Hospital uses Tableau to cut patient waiting times and optimise clinical care for millions in the UK",
"company": "St. George's Hospital ",
"content": "With over 9,000 dedicated staff caring for patients around the clock, St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in London is one of the largest healthcare providers in the UK. In addition to acute hospital services, it delivers a wide variety of specialist care to patients from around the country, as well as a full range of community services to a population of 1.3 million people in southwest London. St George’s implemented Tableau as part of the NHS’s ongoing digital transformation strategy, to deliver a better, more data driven approach to decision making for thousands of clinicians, nurses, admin and management staff every day. The result is higher quality, more efficient patient care, with staff able to self-serve many of their own analytics needs and keep hospital operations running smoothly around the clock. Every year, data becomes more and more important to St George’s Hospital. As the NHS continues its journey towards digital transformation and paperless operations, the need for accurate, easily accessible digital patient records, reports, operational plans and more has never been higher. “Data is now the lifeblood that runs throughout the organisation, feeding every part of it.” says Elizabeth White, CIO at St George’s. “Over time, the demand for information has become huge and with new tech comes new possibilities. AI, big data and visualisation are all having a significant impact on the way we operate day to day and the things we can achieve.” Prior to Tableau, the hospital relied on a combination of spreadsheets and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) for its data analytics and reporting needs. While this approach was adequate for some aspects of operations, the siloed nature of reports made it hard to get key information out to everyone who needed it, and the reports themselves weren’t always easy to navigate or understand. “We knew we needed tools that could help with data sharing, presentation, output and understanding,” explains Elizabeth. “We spent a lot of time and effort on the back-end, getting data into great shape, so the only thing missing was a flexible platform that we could use to bring data to the whole organisation, without any visual limitations.” In 2013, St George’s IT team did a full appraisal of the available solutions, and quickly identified Tableau as the best fit for their needs. “Tableau ticked a lot of boxes for us,” says Rob Simpson, Deputy Head of Information at St George’s. “Speed of development was a big thing, as was the flexibility to link to lots of different business sources and present them in a highly visual, easily digestible way. The ability to consolidate important information in one central location that’s accessible to all proved a significant step forward on our data journey.” Since implementation, Tableau usage has grown substantially throughout the hospital. There are now over 2,000 active unique users, consisting of clinicians, nurses, admin, management, and executive staff. “A few years ago, most users wouldn’t know where to look for data so they would just come to central informatics team, which turned it into a bottleneck for productivity,” notes Preethi Satheyendra, Principal Information Analyst at St George’s Hospital. “Now they can easily find most of what they need directly in Tableau, saving time for everyone.” The result is a flourishing self-service data culture throughout the organisation spanning both operational and clinical activities. “Tableau currently receives more than 240,000 hits a month from users self-serving their own analytics needs,” adds Preethi. “The more our users see, the more they want too, meaning usage and engagement is growing steadily all the time.” To cater for new users, regular drop in sessions are held, which also act as a forum for collaboration and exchanging ideas between existing users. Departments such as finance, HR, renal, procurement and pathology also have their own ‘Tableau Champions’, who look after specific departmental analytics and reporting needs. As usage of Tableau continues to grow, the informatics team has created a series of standardised dashboards and templates to help groups of users quickly find the information they need when they log into Tableau Server. “A great example is our pharmacy dashboard, which gives the pharmacists everything they need to know in a quick glance,” says Preethi. “The dashboard contains the latest data on in/outpatient prescriptions, drugs ordered over time, by whom, and on which wards, as well as the turnaround time between a drug being ordered and it arriving at the pharmacy.” Another example is the ‘Good Morning St George’s’ dashboard, which gives the executive management team key information about patient flow through the hospital, from the number of people in the waiting room, to the number of people who have been discharged in the last 24 hours. “Having such easy access to this kind of information means the executives can make informed decisions at all times, rather than making educated guesses based on data that could be days or even weeks out of date,” adds Preethi. At the start of 2022, St George’s Hospital became part of a wider group with nearby Epson Hospital and St Helier Hospital, significantly expanding the scope of data sharing and reporting taking place between the sites. “Naturally, the new way of working presented a number of data challenges that we’re still working through,” notes Elizabeth. “Fortunately, tools like Tableau are making things a lot easier than they could otherwise have been, both from a sharing and governance perspective. We’re also actively exploring how machine learning can help us to further streamline our analytics and reporting capabilities throughout the group going forward.” “Ultimately, patient care is, and always will be, our number one priority,” concludes Rob. “Better data quality results in better patient journeys, and Tableau is playing a big role in helping us achieve that.”"
},
{
"id": 4,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/abb-uses-tableau-deliver-faster-smarter-business-outcomes",
"title": "ABB uses Tableau to deliver faster, smarter business outcomes",
"company": "ABB",
"content": "ABB is a global leader in technology that supports electrification and automation, driving a more prosperous and sustainable future. Mircea Zamfir, VP of Business Analytics at ABB explains how Tableau is helping the business to make better informed decisions by giving employees access to the right insights, at the right time."
},
{
"id": 5,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/worlds-largest-reinsurer-uses-embedded-analytics-unlock-power-their-data",
"title": "World's largest reinsurer uses embedded analytics to unlock the power of their data",
"company": "Swiss Re",
"content": "The Swiss Re Group is one of the world's leading providers of reinsurance, insurance and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer. Ueli Konrad, Product Manager, Magnum Data Insights at Swiss RE explains how using Tableau has helped the business to build closer and more effective relationships with stakeholder as well as improving its margins."
},
{
"id": 6,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/nhs-digital-supports-uk-covid-19-pandemic-response-tableau-and-aws",
"title": "NHS Digital Supports UK COVID- 19 Pandemic Response with Tableau and AWS",
"company": "NHS Digital",
"content": "This story was produced by our partner, AWS. The original version can be found here. The open data and data visualisation team at NHS Digital was tasked to quickly gather, analyse, and share data related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was used to inform rapid decision making and policy creation, and inform the public. Public facing data was aggregate and anonymous, with private and secure platforms used to deliver more sensitive data to NHS and care users that needed access to more granular information. NHS Digital needed backend infrastructure that could be scaled up to store and process large amounts of data, combined with front-end technology to manipulate it into a form that could be easily shared and understood. NHS Digital—using Amazon Web Services (AWS), and working with data visualization provider Tableau—was able to deliver the first crucial data dashboards in just 9 days. As the COVID-19 pandemic started to hit the UK, the open data and data visualization team at NHS Digital was tasked with quickly gathering and analysing the associated data and presenting it in a way that would help decision makers and assist with creating policy in response to the pandemic. With the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly evolving and escalating, the NHS Digital team had to quickly prioritise the data that would be collected, analysed, and presented to different stakeholders. It used AWS to store and process the data, with AWS Partner Tableau providing Modern Cloud Analytics to analyse and visualise the data and insights in the form of dashboards for the relevant stakeholders. The organization made this choice because it needed a backend infrastructure that could be scaled up to store and process the vast amount of data, integrated with front-end technology that could manipulate this data into a form that could be easily shared and understood. This was the first time NHS Digital had been commissioned to create a mass public dashboard. By using multiple providers, including Tableau and AWS, NHS Digital delivered the first of the crucial new dashboards in a few days. The project, as a whole, completely changed how the NHS can visualise data. Previously, visualizations were built using aggregate data. NHS Digital has now developed secure infrastructure that can host patient-level data in dashboards, enabling vaccine management dashboards and appointment-level information. This enables clinicians and general practitioners (GPs), who can now use smartcard authentication to access these dashboards, to make risk-based decisions, changing the way population health is managed. As these dashboards deal with the most sensitive patient-level data, the use of smartcards means they are also highly secure. Where data is non-patient level, NHS Mail with 2 factor authentication is used. “This ability to go from aggregate data, all the way down to patient level data in a secure way, while challenging, has been immensely transformational,” says Alistair Bullward, head of analytical functions at NHS Digital. The NHS Digital team started its work by looking at the data of people reporting COVID-19 symptoms via the 111 website and call center, or via the 999 emergency services line. With mass testing not yet available, the data produced by these interactions was crucial in helping public health organizations and the government understand the symptoms of COVID-19. They could also use data to visualise how it was spreading across the UK, in order to identify potential hotspots to prepare the public health services in those areas. The NHS Digital team worked closely with Tableau and Goldman Sachs who provided the skills and resources to develop dashboards that analysed and visualised the data quickly and accurately. The rapid scaling of resources needed was supported using AWS. “We needed to get the data out for public access in a safe and anonymised form as soon as possible,” says Bullward. “We then needed to make that data consumable so stakeholders could get insight into the questions they needed to ask.” Soon after, the team was asked to produce a dashboard for high-risk individuals—those whose medical conditions made them especially vulnerable to COVID-19—who were asked to shield at home. This shielded patient list dashboard was used for central planning, such as making social care provisions and organizing for food parcels to be offered to shielding households. The data used was aggregated and anonymous and was published at a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and national level on an open dashboard hub. A private version was also created to pilot functionality with users within the NHS. The Tableau team approached its senior management to secure the rapid provision of these services - taking 9 days from getting the infrastructure stood up to having the first dashboard go live. The cloud-based infrastructure supported rapid decision making as new servers could be added almost instantly, making it easier to iterate and experiment. “In weeks we were going from nothing to having an enterprise solution for thousands of people a week and scaled to support something much, much bigger,” says Bullward. In parallel, the NHS Digital team developed a range of dashboards for different stakeholders and groups. For example, directors of public health who needed to view data across England and its regions. These included dashboards for the shielded patients list, the NHS Pathways coronavirus triages (111 data), NHS Digital services dashboard, and the GP COVID-19 vaccine dashboard. Knowing the number of positive cases in different areas was important for public health operations, including the introduction of the tier system in autumn 2020, with legal restrictions around movement and social mixing varying depending on the level of risk in local areas. It was at this stage that the public-facing “coronavirus-in-your-area” dashboard was launched, allowing users to type in their postcode to view local case rates. During the first 24 hours after going live, the online service received 120,000 visitors. The NHS Digital team remained hard at work during this time, launching a dashboard identifying people suitable for clinical trials for vaccines by the end of 2020. A university dashboard followed in January 2021 as students prepared to return. A key element to the project’s success was a team spirit that developed as the different organizations worked together. Tableau and AWS regularly stepped in to help out. Established hierarchies across NHS Digital adapted to the situation. “Everyone had a sense of purpose, it didn’t matter who you worked for, it was about getting the job done,” says Bullward, who found himself doing manual testing with an NHS director on Sunday evenings. “We just got on with it.” The combination of the people, skills, expertise, and tooling helped the NHS Digital team overcome several challenges, such as the amount of traffic hitting the COVID “in-your-area” dashboard when it went live. The team used Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN) service built for high performance, security, and developer convenience, to stop any issues occurring. The capabilities NHS Digital developed during the pandemic now provide the means for real population health management as never done before. As a result, NHS Digital aims to launch new capabilities more quickly by starting with a minimum viable product. “I think a lot of people who were involved in the project now look back and think ‘Oh, that was wonderful, we need to keep that up as much as we can’,” says Bullward. The team has since supported the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine programme, including the vaccination roll out. Providing patient-level dashboards to people making decisions is a key focus. “For me, that’s the future,\" says Bullward. \"It’s about being able to go from high-level stuff and then going to that patient-level stuff so public health professionals can do what they need to do to improve lives.” "
},
{
"id": 7,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/staysure-uses-tableau-online-break-down-stubborn-data-silos-and-transform",
"title": "Staysure uses Tableau Cloud to break down stubborn data silos and transform business decision making processes",
"company": "Staysure",
"content": "Staysure Group is the UK’s number one travel insurance provider. The company was originally founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Ryan Howsam, to ensure over-50s could access travel insurance that covered pre-existing medical conditions. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength, significantly expanding its insurance offerings and providing peace of mind to more than eight million customers around the country. Over the last 12 months, Staysure has used Tableau to transform itself into a fully data driven company, breaking down data silos and creating a powerful new culture where employees at all levels of the business can self-serve their own analytics needs. Staysure has also used Tableau analytics to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on its business and inform key decisions during this critical time for the travel industry. Insurance is a highly data driven industry, with millions of policies bought and sold every day based on detailed analytical insights. However, as insurance companies grow and expand, their own internal data structures can be hard to maintain, resulting in disparate data environments that impact overall business efficiency. When Matt Cullen joined Staysure as Head of Business Insight in January 2021, this was exactly the situation he faced. “I came into an environment with lots of spreadsheets and manual data reporting, and no overarching structure or governance” said Matt. “Rapid growth, combined with multiple acquisitions, had created fragmented data silos all over the business, making it hard for employees to quickly find the information or intelligence they needed.” With Tableau in place, employees now have a single unified platform through which they can work and collaborate, creating a much higher level of trust in data and reducing conflict between different departments. “In the past, people would come into meetings with their own siloed versions of the same data, for example on quote and sale volumes,” explains Matt. “Often, there would be small discrepancies between the numbers caused by different definitions or filters, which quickly led to issues. Now, everyone logs into Tableau Cloud and the latest data is always there for them to see.” Tableau’s user-friendly interface has also significantly increased the amount of self-service analytics taking place throughout the company. “Tableau makes it incredibly easy to create attractive and engaging visuals that are simple to understand, regardless of an individual’s own level of analytics experience,” says Matt. “As a consequence, people are much more willing to start exploring data themselves.” Doing so has helped eliminate numerous bottlenecks to productivity, improving decision making and speeding up time to insight in the process. “Previously, many employees would wait for someone in the finance or central insights team to do all their analytics for them, says Matt. “Now we have 35 Tableau creators and explorers in all departments of the business, as well as over 100 viewers, making detailed analytics faster, smoother and more enjoyable for everyone.” Some of Staysure’s most avid Tableau users are its executives, which Matt believes is a key factor in the growing data culture at the company. One particularly popular executive dashboard offers near real-time updates on top line KPIs, including the number of policies sold that day and the total revenue created across all the company’s key brands, including Staysure, Avanti, and Petsure. “Having real-time trading information available in Tableau is really valuable; it helps me, and my executive colleagues, identify issues as soon as they emerge and make quicker, more efficient decisions,” says Chris Sugden, CFO, Staysure Group. In addition to the insights provided, Tableau’s extensive automation features have also significantly streamlined reporting throughout the company, ensuring everyone has the latest information at their fingertips. “Tableau gives us the ability to schedule flows overnight,” explains Matt. “Previously, we would have to run them manually every morning at 9am and they took an hour to complete, meaning no one had access to the latest data until 10am at the earliest.” Now, the company uses Tableau’s Data Management Add-on to run the flows automatically every night, which means hundreds of worksheets are refreshed in Tableau Cloud by 5am each day. “I used to lie awake worrying about how to speed up the daily flows, but now I know they will be there every morning when I arrive at the office, which is a big weight off my mind,” says Matt. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a huge amount of uncertainty throughout the travel industry, making it very hard to effectively plan ahead by more than a few weeks. However, Staysure has been able to use Tableau analytics to take much of the guesswork out of decision making at this difficult time. “There’s lots of open-source data out there about COVID-19 and the impact it’s having around the world,” explains Matt. “By plugging this information into Tableau, we’ve been able to understand, and even predict, changes to things like the foreign travel traffic light list. Doing so means we can amend our own plans and communications much faster than would otherwise have been possible, putting us in a position to help customers as soon as enquiries start coming in.”"
},
{
"id": 8,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/kramp-thanks-company-wide-visual-analytics-essential-step-towards-digital",
"title": "Kramp: Thanks to company-wide visual analytics, an essential step towards digital transformation has been taken",
"company": "Kramp",
"content": "Kramp Group is the largest supplier of parts and accessories for the agricultural industry throughout Europe. With more than 500,000 products available online, 11 distribution centers, and 24 stores across Europe, Kramp is the most reliable partner for customers and suppliers within the agricultural sector. Kramp Group was founded in 1951, with its headquarters are located in Varsseveld (The Netherlands). Over the past five years, Kramp has gone through a very successful digital transformation. With Tableau’s visual analytics platform, the company has been able to adopt a data-driven approach in all areas. Kramp currently has over 3,000 employees, 1,200 of which are active Tableau users, checking the Tableau dashboard around 112,000 times per month. Thanks to this novel working approach, Kramp has weathered the storm of the coronavirus crisis and, in 2020. achieved a record turnover for €953 million. Kramp Manager Digital Intelligence Ewoud van Dijk gives a great example of this new data-driven approach. “Tableau played a key role in the implementation of our pricing strategy, which ultimately had a significant impact on our results. Managing prices for over 500,000 products per country requires a clear strategy and a data-driven approach. To ensure that Kramp is able to offer competitive prices, thereby enabling volume growth and maintaining prices for our large assortment of products, visualizing price-related data is of great importance. All this data is displayed in Tableau, helping pricing managers in their ongoing search for opportunities to improve our prices. Different pricing scenarios can be calculated and visualized so that the right decisions can be made. In addition, sales results are analyzed in Tableau, discovering new opportunities and taking subsequent action.” Ewoud: “At Kramp, while we primarily focus on the customer, we also focus on scalability and efficiency. With the most important processes are displayed in Tableau, our “Continuous Improvement Program” staff identify which processes can be improved in terms of efficiency and scalability. A good example of this is the “order to delivery” process. This is one of the first processes that we made visually transparent. For example, insight into “on time delivery” is highly valuable for the organization. Armed with such data and its visual representations, Kramp is able to focus its efforts in the right areas to further improve the process.” Five years ago, Kramp’s turnover figures were only available via an outdated BI (business intelligence) tool, which mainly displayed data using plain tables. From a visual standpoint, this was not very engaging at all. BI was entirely under the IT department, while business self-service options were non-existent. At that time, Remko Schepers joined Kramp as Senior Business Controller in charge of the Sales & Marketing department. Remko asked his colleague Ewoud how he could make the data more transparent. Ewoud: “I showed Remko my Excel sheets. I was not happy with them at all, but it was all I had. At that point, the colossal amount of data I had could no longer even fit within my Excel sheets.” That conversation was the start of Kramp’s digital transformation in the field of BI, which later expanded into the field of data and analytics. Remko is now the Manager Business Control Development in charge of further developing analytical insights and data-driven financial forecasting. Remko: “At first, it was just five early ambassadors participating in this endeavor. Very soon, we realized the limitations of what the five of us could do. If we wanted to succeed, we needed a plan to expand. So, together with the business owners in Finance and Technology, we developed a project plan. To carry it out, we had to reach out to the board members and get their approval. Eventually, the Executive Board approved our plan. We had to agree on specific BI governance, whereby each Board domain had to be self-sufficient to some extent and be able to claim some of the central BI team’s development capacity.” Remko considered that introducing self-service was very important, since it would become a necessary step towards implementing visual analytics and consequently making that large amount of data accessible. And with that, they would be able to develop accurate and effective dashboards themselves, with which they could then create actionable insights. “For Ewoud and I, it was clear from the start that, to make the project a success, we needed to get the whole organization on board. We wanted to develop a company-wide data-driven mindset. With a decentralized approach to BI, strong involvement from all departments, and a lot of freedom for users to visualize their own data, we were able to establish the desired data-driven mindset.” “Our philosophy at the start was to limit the number of Tableau licenses to about 30, distributed across all business departments. The point was to ensure that the licenses would be properly utilized. In the process, we also drafted a guideline for managers to determine whether someone was eligible for a license. The greatest freedom given to the business was to be able to connect with several often-unstructured data sources. This went straight against IT etiquette” says Remko. “Many companies tend to keep everything inaccessible. I still believe that making it available for everyone was the right thing to do. It helped speed up the development of insights and, at the same time, set up a robust data warehouse, which usually takes considerably more time. Later, however, we did have to centralize control somewhat further. That was Ewoud’s decision. The philosophy of local and decentralized management in charge of each department with the use of Tableau was maintained, but we introduced an overall management system to keep everything organized and under control.” Remko: “In the fall of 2016, after we had laid the foundation for the data warehouse with Teradata, we settled upon a tool for data visualization. Representatives from all relevant departments were involved in the selection process, as we were looking for a tool that could fit every area as best as possible. We collectively opted for Tableau. The deciding factor was the fact that Tableau is set up very intuitively. There is also the fact that Tableau has a very large community of users in the market that is always sharing its experience for best practices.” Ewoud: “In the first year, which was very hectic, Infotopics from Oldenzaal helped us with the foundation, the installation of the server, the access rights based on roles and groups, and many more related aspects. Then, we distributed the licenses, and the analysts were trained and assisted by Infotopics in creating the first dashboards. It became evident that this new tool would be adopted very quickly. Infotopics’ goal is to help their customers fully get into the swing of things, and Kramp’s goal back then was to achieve self-sufficiency. That is why our partnership with Infotopics worked so wonderfully. Now we are able to handle things ourselves in most areas, while Infotopics still jumps in and helps us with complex issues or when we need an extra pair of hands.” Remko: “2020 was a very special year for Kramp. When the Coronavirus crisis hit, we devised scenarios and worked out how we would weather potential setbacks. In the end, the opposite turned out to be true: our sales actually increased substantially. However, it is important to point out that we immediately took adequate measures, both logistically and within the workspace. The logistics service was able to continue as usual and remote work was quickly implemented by means of applications such as Tableau. Moreover, the digital transformation we had already kick-started added more functionality to our E-Commerce platform. This also proved to be very beneficial. I think 2020 is proof that digital transformation is the right way to go.”\nEwoud: “Tableau was very helpful during the COVID-19 crisis as it allowed everyone to access all the important insights from their homes. That way they were always aware of what was going on.” Ewoud: “In recent years, Kramp has mainly focused on extracting and using data insights. For this purpose, Tableau has been a great asset. Currently, we know that there are more opportunities to make our analytics even more actionable. We are now seeing more and more initiatives to use data science, forecasting, and analytics in our business processes. You do not become data-driven overnight.” Remko: “The chosen decentralized approach has created many new KPIs and insights. However, it has become increasingly necessary to submit these findings to the country management and the board in a standardized and centralized way. Many managers still view Tableau as a maze of dashboards. Within Finance, we have started a project to create an “Integrated Country Performance Dashboard” with Tableau. The process entails retrieving all KPI data from the business domains that use the click-through functionality and displaying them on the dashboards. We also created a KPI handbook with definitions and responsibilities, along with a collaborative platform within an app that was specifically developed for this purpose. We see the KPI framework as an integral part of sustaining good business practices. As such, we are able to cleverly combine the centralized data and set up driver-based forecast models to advance to the next stage of data-driven methodologies for continuous financial planning within Kramp. This is yet another instance where Tableau will play an important role by making the insights accessible.”"
},
{
"id": 9,
"url": "https://www.tableau.com/en-gb/solutions/customer/vr-bank-mitte-eg-reduces-analytics-effort-with-tableau",
"title": "VR-Bank Mitte eG reduziert mit Tableau den Analytics-Aufwand um 70 %, stärkt die Kundenbindung und gewinnt neue Einsichten für die kontinuierliche Leistungsverbesserung",
"company": "VR-Bank Mitte eG",
"content": "Money transactions are a matter of trust. And because personal contact and communication with the financial institution are particularly important in this regard, VR-Bank Mitte eG conspicuously presents itself as the “Mitmachbank” (the bank to join in). With a balance sheet total of about €2.5 billion, the company serves individuals and businesses from an area of considerable size, consisting of the districts of Eichsfeld, Northeim, Göttingen and Werra-Meißner. VR-Bank Mitte eG counts around 430 full-time and part-time employees and maintains relationships with clients and members via virtually all conventional and digital channels, from its network of 30 branches to a phone and online branch, to mobile apps and presences in the social networks, to a regular podcast. “Because our relationships with customers, members and employees are of great importance to us, we regularly ask them for detailed feedback regarding perception of our brand, our contact and consulting quality, assessment of price-performance ratio, evaluation of our processes, and general satisfaction”, explains Benedikt Lares, Head of Sales Management, VR-Bank Mitte eG. “To this end we provide a structured, multi-page online questionnaire on our website, which our visitors may use for feedback, spontaneously or after being prompted, for example by mail or after a consultation conversation. We wanted to automate and professionalise the analysis of these assessments. After an in-depth analysis of the market, we went with Tableau. Tableau reliably accompanied the decision-making process and was always on our side with advice and support. This solution enables employees to quickly analyse data from various sources even without prior technological knowledge.” In the meantime, the company has installed its own Tableau server. Three colleagues take care of server administration as well as creation of analyses and dashboards that around 35 managers access regularly. “We’ve enrolled our dashboard developers in the Tableau Academy meanwhile, to enable them to make maximum use of the solution. But for me the most impressive aspect was that, right from the beginning, they’ve created amazing analyses with Tableau, just after watching some YouTube videos and without further support.” Meanwhile the company has analysed close to 2,000 pieces of client feedback with Tableau. “We saved enormous amounts of evaluation time – 60 to 70%,” reports Benedikt Lares. “The interactive dashboards are updated weekly. Now we have access to the current numbers anywhere and at any time, for example in meetings and on the move from the iPad. Using filters and drill-downs, you can set the desired parameters quickly, if need be down to an individual evaluation.” Even though the new solution has only been deployed since mid-2020, the acceptance among leadership is high. Additionally, the feedback analysis is distributed quarterly to all employees as a condensed fact sheet. The predominantly positive customer feedback made the workforce feel empowered and increased their loyalty to their employer. “Analysis of customer feedback allows evocative insights, for example in the valuation of our brand, our consulting quality, or our price-performance ratio in different age groups and regions,” explains Florian Hartleib, Regional Manager of Company Communication, VR-Bank Mitte eG. “We have, for example, noticed that our performance has often been rated higher directly after a consultation. And the ratio of referrals rose as well. We were able to take countermeasures when shortcomings were noticed, using appropriate means of communication or offers, and were able to improve customer retention continuously.” All in all VR-Bank Mitte eG sees itself to be still at the beginning of its customer analyses. “We first wanted to establish a baseline of our external image to subsequently build on,” reports Florian Hartleib. “The results are encouraging. In the future, we can imagine defining certain feedback metrics as binding service levels.” Meanwhile VR-Bank Mitte eG is conducting employee surveys in a similar manner and regularly collects status reports from leadership for an overview of the internal situation. Benedikt Lares says: “Perceived shortcomings, for example regarding the furnishing of hardware and software in the workplace, are immediately visible in the illustrations by way of traffic light colours.” Besides ongoing feedback analysis, VR-Bank Mitte eG uses Tableau for a whole range of other applications, such as analysing members, investigating usage of its online channels and ATMs, and evaluating sales results. Additional dashboards, for example to visualise credit processes, are soon to be completed or in the planning stage. Benedikt Lares explains in conclusion: “We are involving future users in the development of new dashboards to achieve high acceptance right from the start. And we are already noticing a kind of culture change. Colleagues aren’t put off from surveys or evaluations any longer, since the daily interaction with data has, thanks to Tableau, become much more simple and intuitive than in the past. The future certainly harbours even more possibilities.”"
}
]