Key Takeaway
With Fivetran, MyParcel replaces a time-consuming and less reliable internal solution for centralizing data into Snowflake. With a modern data stack, the business integrates additional sources of data to understand the marketing funnel and customer journey. A modern data stack has proven critical as businesses move operations online, with agile analytics enabling quick turnaround of up-to-date Looker dashboards and reports.
Data Stack
- Pipeline: Fivetran
- Sources: Google Analytics, Mailchimp, PostgreSQL, Salesforce, SFTP
- Destination: Snowflake
- BI Tool: Looker
Netherlands-based MyParcel enables businesses big and small to send mail and packages. With over 34,000 customers, it is the largest and most popular shipping service in the Netherlands. Services include package, mail and pallet shipment, digital stamps, collection and return services, and tracking pages.
Challenge: Integrating Data Sources
MyParcel had multiple data sources but was only bringing data from its own production database into Snowflake. To integrate more data sources to get a more complete picture of its customers, the development team began to engineer a couple of connectors, including Salesforce.
Martin Bakels, who started on the marketing team and now serves as a data analyst for the entire business explains: “We had a Salesforce connection, but it didn’t incrementally update and when we needed to add a table we had to rebuild the whole thing. We quickly realized this wasn’t sustainable and we knew there had to be a simpler solution.”
“We really needed to merge our Google Analytics data with our sales data,” adds marketer Tom Driehuis. “I could see new customers joining, but not how many parcels they were sending. I didn’t have a view of the entire funnel and customer journey.”
Completing the Modern Data Stack With Fivetran
While it did evaluate some competitors, MyParcel landed on Fivetran because it had all of the connectors that the business needed, including SFTP, which it uses to load its Cendris data, among other data. With Fivetran, MyParcel was able to connect all of its sources to Snowflake easily and quickly, enabling analysis in Looker.
“We have more and cleaner data since bringing on Fivetran and because of that, people are incorporating data in their decision process.” says Bakels. “We’re starting to analyze data from Mailchimp and customer service metrics from Salesforce, which we weren’t looking at before.”
In addition to the higher quantity and quality of data, MyParcel benefits from significant time-savings. “In just a few clicks I can add new tables to Salesforce or add new connections,” explains Bakels. “I have no knowledge of programming, and I’m not an engineering specialist. It has saved us a lot of time: three to four days a month on our Salesforce connector alone. Our development team is now working on building our shipping platform rather than data pipelines.”
Enhancing Marketing Analytics
By bringing all its data sources together, the business can analyze the entire funnel, from when and where people first learn about the brand, to the moment they fill out a form to become a customer and the number of parcels new customers are sending. With this data, the business can accurately determine campaign revenue. By combining Google Analytics data and Salesforce data, the team can determine how many leads become customers.
“I’m learning more about the data and I’m using it more,” says Driehuis. “When I started at MyParcel, not many employees were using data and, in some cases, decisions were based on feelings rather than data. Now people come to us to check the data. We had a presentation this morning with our manager to talk her through what we have built with Fivetran, Snowflake and Looker and we’re going to roll it out to the entire company.”
Using Data to Respond to Change
As brick-and-mortar stores shift their operations toward ecommerce, MyParcel has seen an increase in sales and the team is busy onboarding and meeting the needs of both new and existing clients.
“We used to look at monthly or weekly growth, now we’re delivering reports on a daily level as a response to the changing market,” says Bakels. “We can see more detailed information in smaller timeframes.”
When the business started working from home during the lockdown, one of the first requests was to build out a weekly support dashboard so the support team could track its performance each week. Now it can ensure it is keeping up with support while bringing on new customers.
Bakels recognizes the role of the modern data stack in a time of crisis: “At this point this data stack is critical. We’re able to provide all necessary reports for a company of 100 people with just a team of two data analysts. Without these solutions in place, we wouldn’t be able to maintain our connections and the data or deliver the data as quickly or efficiently.”
Want to see how a modern data stack enables holistic and agile analytics? Request a personalised demo or start your free trial today.
About Fivetran: Shaped by the real-world needs of data analysts, Fivetran technology is the smartest, fastest way to replicate your applications, databases, events and files into a high-performance cloud warehouse. Fivetran connectors deploy in minutes, require zero maintenance, and automatically adjust to source changes — so your data team can stop worrying about engineering and focus on driving insights.
About Snowflake: Snowflake is the leading data warehouse built for the cloud. Its unique architecture delivers proven breakthroughs in performance, concurrency and simplicity. For the first time, multiple groups can access petabytes of data at the same time, up to 200 times faster and 10 times less expensive than solutions not built for the cloud. Snowflake is a fully managed service with a pay-as-you-go-model that works on structured and semi-structured data.
About Looker: Looker is a modern platform for data that offers data analytics and business insights to every department at scale, and easily integrates into applications to deliver data directly into the decision-making process.
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