Fivetran > Case Studies > DOUGLAS' Transformation: Centralizing 200+ Data Sources with Fivetran

DOUGLAS' Transformation: Centralizing 200+ Data Sources with Fivetran

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
Analytics & Modeling - Data-as-a-Service

Applicable Industries

Buildings
Cement

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Building Automation & Control
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

DOUGLAS is Europe's leading premium beauty platform, inspiring customers to live their own kind of beauty. The company offers more than 130,000 beauty and lifestyle products through its online shops, beauty marketplace, and over 2,000 stores. In the fiscal year 2019-2020, DOUGLAS generated sales of 3.2 billion euros in areas such as perfumery, decorative cosmetics, skin and hair care, nutritional supplements, and accessories. The company is on a mission to become a 'Digital First' business, and to achieve this, it is investing in state-of-the-art technology and data modelling.

The Challenge

DOUGLAS, a leading premium beauty platform in Europe, was facing a significant challenge in its journey to become a 'Digital First' business. The company's existing infrastructure and processes, particularly around Business Intelligence (BI) and data analytics, were not up to the mark. The systems for collecting data were scattered, and there was an overreliance on spreadsheets and manual input, which were not scalable. This lack of a centralized, automated data collection and analysis system was hindering the company's growth and its ability to gain valuable insights from its data.

The Solution

To overcome these challenges, DOUGLAS decided to invest in a future-oriented, best-practice combination of Fivetran for automated data integration, Snowflake for the data warehouse, and Tableau for data analytics. This solution involved using around 200 active connectors to pull data from multiple sources with Fivetran, providing the business with market intelligence across a range of areas. The automated data integration by Fivetran allowed BI analysts, BI engineers, data scientists, and marketing and eCommerce experts to turn data into actionable insights more quickly. Additionally, the company now had a robust, resilient, and GDPR-compliant architecture that met all the necessary security requirements for a large, internationally operating online enterprise dealing with sensitive customer data.

Operational Impact

The implementation of the new data stack has been a game-changer for DOUGLAS. By replacing manual processes with an automated environment, the company has saved the equivalent time of 2-3 full-time employees. The new infrastructure has provided fast access to data and has proven to be resilient and scalable, giving DOUGLAS a future-proof foundation for further growth. More sophisticated data analytics are already underway, with one workstream delving deeper into data science. The transition into a data-driven business has also made the company an attractive employer for data engineers, analysts, and scientists, who are typically hard to recruit. This has allowed DOUGLAS to attract top IT talent and continue its spectacular growth trajectory.

Quantitative Benefit

Decreased workload in manual report creation saves time of one full-time Data Engineer
Fivetran has saved 30% of time, which was spent previously on building and maintaining data pipelines
The Modern Data Stack has allowed next level assessment of digital campaigns