Case Study · Business Intelligence in E-commerce
How Keller Sports saves 50% of its IT time thanks to optimally organised pipelines
By integrating Fivetran, Snowflake and Tableau into the company’s day-to-day operations, Kemb was able to help Keller Sports save time previously spent on writing scripts and manual data entry, and to analyse the business using reliable data.
20 hours/week
saved, which was previously spent writing scripts and troubleshooting
A rapidly growing e-commerce group
Keller Sports, founded in Munich in 2005, is an e-commerce company that sells sports equipment across various European countries via more than 20 different online shops.
As the company grew rapidly, so too did the need for a robust IT infrastructure, particularly in terms of its ERP and business intelligence set-up.
About the client
Keller Sports
In 2019, kemb GmbH had the opportunity to support Keller Sports in optimising its IT infrastructure, particularly its ERP and business intelligence set-up, in order to keep pace with the company’s rapid growth and the resulting demands.
In doing so, we worked closely with Florian Otte, who had been with the company from the outset and was responsible for the development of the online shops. He is now the CTO and responsible for the entire IT department, which includes, amongst other things, supporting the BI team in setting up the company’s new reporting structure.
Key figures at a glance
20 hours/week
saved, which was previously spent writing scripts and troubleshooting
75%
time saved that was previously spent exporting raw data from MySQL to Excel
Project Prerequisites
The challenge: from Excel to Business Intelligence
Compared to where it stood 10 to 12 years ago, Keller Sports had already made significant progress before kemb became involved in the process. However, as the company grew, all previous solutions reached their limits.
- Excel as a bottleneck: With millions of rows, Excel was no longer viable as a basis for business intelligence; creating a report took several hours every week.
- Growing number of data sources: With the emergence of Google Analytics and other sources, maintaining the company’s own interface for sales and data queries became increasingly labour-intensive.
- Scaling limitations with MySQL and Tableau: Even moving the data to MySQL, supplemented by Tableau, could not be scaled indefinitely as soon as new sources and data types were to be added.
- Staffing requirements: Without a new solution, Keller Sports would have had to hire more developers just to keep pace with its own growth.
★★★★★
“We used to use Excel for our BI. Back then, that wasn’t a major problem, but we quickly outgrew it. With millions of rows, Excel isn’t your friend. It took a few hours every week to generate a report.”
Florian Otte, CTO Keller Sports
Our strategic approach
Why Fivetran
At this point, Keller Sports brought kemb on board to find the right tools for a scalable and reliable data stack. We began with a requirements workshop and interviews with department heads regarding current and future reporting requirements, as well as recurring issues with the data systems in place at the time. After comparing several solutions for ETL, data warehousing and data visualisation, we proposed a setup comprising Fivetran and Snowflake.
01 Autonomy
Integration without IT support
The Keller Sports team can integrate new data sources themselves via the Fivetran UI and identify any issues directly there, rather than having to wait for the IT department.
02 Development time
Fewer development resources
Fivetran handles the maintenance of scripts and interfaces, for which Keller Sports would otherwise have had to hire additional developers.
03 Trust in data
Figures everyone trusts
Teams no longer need to piece together key figures in Excel or coordinate with other departments before working with them.
04 Reliability
Data that stays up to date
No one needs to report that figures are inaccurate or haven’t been updated for days.
★★★★★
“With Fivetran, we need fewer development resources. People used to come to me to say that the data was inaccurate or hadn’t been updated for days. Now our team can set up the connection to Fivetran themselves. If something isn’t working or there’s a problem, they can see it for themselves in the Fivetran UI. They no longer need IT support.”
FO
Florian Otte
CTO, Keller Sports
The updated setup
Transferring data to Snowflake and visualising it with Tableau
In addition to integrating Fivetran into Keller Sports’ day-to-day operations, further key benefits have been realised with Snowflake and Tableau. Fivetran’s standard connectors automatically transfer the data to Snowflake.
The IT department at Keller Sports found the joint implementation of Fivetran, Snowflake and Tableau to be very straightforward: everything was connected to Fivetran within a few minutes, the data was automatically transferred to Snowflake, and the BI team was able to work directly with the data without requiring any dedicated IT resources. Following the switch from MySQL to Snowflake, the company also migrated its Tableau Server instance to Tableau Online.
★★★★★
“We currently have 140 GB of data in Snowflake and can scale and manage everything without needing our own DevOps team or servers. In the past, I had to ensure the MySQL database was working, fix it when it went down, and decide whether to delete data or buy additional discs. None of that is necessary anymore.”
Florian Otte, CTO Keller Sports
With all these SaaS applications, Keller Sports’ data has become more reliable and easier to access. Fivetran, Snowflake and Tableau work well together, meaning the company no longer has to manage anything itself.
Reports across the entire organisation
Data-driven decisions in every department
At Keller Sports, around 20 to 25 people from various departments now actively work with reports in Tableau. With transparent data, it is easier for Keller Sports’ BI team to create or amend reports that have an impact across the entire company.
Purchasing
A report enables efficient stock analysis and reordering.
Marketing
Revenue by channel and customer lifetime value can be analysed directly.
Sales
A margin report shows daily revenue and margins, which form the basis for price adjustments.
Project Results
The key outcomes of the collaboration
No need for an additional engineering
Keller Sports was able to avoid hiring at least one more engineer to carry out the work that Fivetran now handles.
20 hours of IT time per week
The IT department saves around 20 hours per week that were previously spent writing scripts and resolving issues.
75% less time spent on data export
The purchasing department has saved 75% of the time previously spent exporting raw data from MySQL to Excel.
Scalable without DevOps or servers
With Snowflake, Keller Sports can scale and maintain everything without needing its own DevOps resources or servers.
Tableau reports across all departments
Numerous Tableau reports in purchasing, marketing and sales enable data-driven decisions across the entire company.
More about the toolset
Fivetran, Snowflake and Tableau at a glance
About Fivetran
Fivetran’s technology was developed based on the real-world needs of data analysts and is regarded as one of the fastest ways to replicate applications, databases, events and files into a high-performance cloud warehouse. Fivetran connectors can be set up in a matter of minutes, are maintenance-free and automatically adapt to changes in the sources.
About Snowflake
Snowflake is a leading data warehouse designed specifically for the cloud. Its architecture enables multiple teams to access petabytes of data simultaneously, as a fully managed service with a pay-as-you-go model for structured and semi-structured data.
About Tableau
Tableau helps people visualise and understand their data. The platform offers the breadth and depth of functionality that businesses require and adapts flexibly to the respective environment, whilst maintaining high standards of governance and security.
Are you facing similar challenges?
We’d be happy to discuss how we can support you with your data requirements. Don’t hesitate to book a free consultation at a time that suits you.