Fivetran details how Trinny London saved £260k by streamlining operations

Thu 14 Nov 2024

A global leader in automated data movement, Fivetran, has released details as to how the company saved Trinny London £250,000 ($329,138) by streamlining its operations.

As a result of the streamlining, Trinny London has gained full visibility across marketing platforms, enables over 50% of employees to access data in a self-service manner, and has achieved the efficiency of a data engineering team, saving up to £250,000 ($329,138) annually.

“Everything on Fivetran runs smoothly and just works, we know that whenever we reach out to them, they are ready to assist. It has always been a collaborative effort, and that is what we appreciate most about Fivetran, it feels like a true partnership,” said Holly Foster, Data Lead at Trinny London.

When Don Tran joined Trinny London as the Technical Director, he inherited a data stack that failed to keep pace with the business. The existing data integration processes were inefficient and, when Facebook implemented changes to off-site conversions, the existing solution failed to update the connector on time, resulting in prolonged periods of downtime. For a company heavily reliant on its online presence, this posed a barrier to success. Tran and his team chose Fivetran and within days, they had a fully automated and reliable data integration solution in place.

Pulling in Real-time Data Reliably and Quickly

Fivetran simplified the migration of the company’s database from the US to the UK following the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This move required the replication of all existing connectors, a process made significantly easier with Fivetran.

Trinny London now utilises over 20 Fivetran connectors, including several for social media and marketing platforms, to integrate data from various sources. This includes selecting specific tables from NetSuite, allowing the team to focus on relevant data without having to ingest all 2,500 tables.

“I do not know how we would even begin to ingest NetSuite data effectively without Fivetran, it would have been a nightmare,” said Foster.

Foster stressed the process with Fivetran was ‘easy and straightforward’.

“I set it up, and within three days, we had the basis of the NetSuite tables. We were ahead of schedule on our roadmap because it was just so quick,” added Foster.

The company has developed its data infrastructure through a combination of tools and platforms, which help streamline data integration, storage, and analysis across different areas of the business.

Fivetran is used for automated data integration, enabling the connection of a wide range of data sources to Trinny London’s data ecosystem. This includes data from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Fivetran also facilitates the extraction of data from S3, a cloud storage solution designed to manage large volumes of unstructured data, as well as from MySQL, a relational database management system that stores structured data.

For data management and processing, Trinny London employs Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which provides scalable and reliable infrastructure to handle large datasets, supporting the company’s continued global expansion. To analyse and extract insights from its data, Trinny London uses ThoughtSpot, a business intelligence (BI) platform that allows teams to generate actionable insights for informed decision-making.

Democratising Access to Data

One of the primary goals for Trinny London’s data team was to ensure data accessibility across all departments. Using Fivetran’s services, Trinny London now helps enable employees to self-serve for basic queries themselves and explore complex analytics on their own. This capability lets employees access the data they need, build their reports and conduct analysis, saving time and eliminating bottlenecks.

According to Foster, interest in data has grown significantly, with half of the employees now having direct access to all the data they need in one centralisation location.

“If we have to wait several months to find out how well a social media channel is performing, what’s the point? But with data so readily available through Fivetran, teams can glean insights, measure performance and make data-driven decisions without hassle. That is incredibly powerful,” said Foster.

Trinny London’s marketing and finance departments no longer need to manually combine data from different sources, like spend data from Facebook and click data from Snowplow. Now, all data from their commerce and marketing tools is consolidated in one place, providing a comprehensive and reliable view of performance and enabling more effective optimisation.

Driving Growth Through Data-driven Strategies

The data culture at Trinny London, built with Fivetran, has helped transform data from a business barrier into a major driver of success. By involving the data team early in large projects, Trinny London can set up everything pre-launch and begin data ingestion immediately after going live.

This proactive approach has enhanced the company’s understanding of data’s role in strategy building, enabling teams to make informed projections and create long-term plans. Meanwhile, the data team can focus on high-level strategic projects instead of constantly building pipelines.

“Thanks to Fivetran, a single data engineer manages our entire data platform for over 200 people, seamlessly ingesting millions of rows of data daily. It is a true testament to the power and efficiency of Fivetran,” said Don Tran, Technical Director at Trinny London.