Learn how Heureka Group generates extra 450k per year by enriching data in Keboola.
Heureka Group is an online shopping advisor that prides itself in providing simple, fast, secure, and enjoyable e-commerce and price-comparison solutions across central and eastern Europe.
In less than 15 years, the company has grown to more than 20 million monthly users, becoming one of Europe’s leading e-commerce platforms. Heureka Group continues to build on that success by launching and acquiring e-commerce clients across the region.
We chatted with Michal Buzek, the BI Director, to uncover how Heureka Group uses Keboola to manage any data and grow its e-commerce operations.
Before joining Heureka Group, Michal Buzek worked in data analytics for more than ten years. And now, he leads Heureka Group’s analytics department, heading up multiple teams across nine different countries.
He has used Keboola extensively since 2013 to facilitate all company data requirements. When we asked if Keboola influenced his career in a meaningful way, Michal quickly admitted that the tool became a game-changer in his professional life.
“Keboola gave me the opportunity to connect databases, to connect external data with internal ones, and actually to give greater context to salespeople, product managers, and so on.”
Michal had spent several years in data analytics before he first used the platform. Amid his efforts to implement a business intelligence tool for data visualization, he stumbled upon Keboola.
Michal knew firsthand of the time-loss and fallibility of operating data with spreadsheets, but Keboola helped work faster and with more accuracy—from that point on, he never went back to spreadsheets.
One of the first challenges Michal faced at Heureka Group involved a time limit on data cleaning. For any enterprise with ambitions of scaling, this was an anchor that had to go.
“There were several challenges when it came to data. The company was using a lot of Excel reports across different departments and different countries, there was no data integration. Another problem was that there was only a direct connection between one of our databases and the Tableau server which didn't allow us to analyze the largest database tables.”
Being able to process and stream data beyond the 90-day restriction helped Michal and the Heureka Group data team gather better intelligence, build dashboards, and connect to internal networks from remote locations with ease.
The old data system problems stemmed from how it could not handle long-term data needs. Also, it felt challenging to use. These were issues that Michal believed Keboola could solve.
“Keboola has an advantage over other solutions in that it has been doing this for a very long time,” he explained, "and there are a lot of ready-made components and extractors that are simple to operate in a few clicks, both for people and business."
The team at Heureka Group primarily uses Keboola to provide reports and analytical insights to top clients and stakeholders. Such user-friendly reporting helps even non-technical people glean valuable business intelligence from the data, which, in turn, empowers them to improve decision-making.
“We try not only for top management and investors but for all departments in the company to prepare data for dashboards, reports that they will use, which will make their daily work easier.”
By providing analytical support, Keboola helps employees increase their productivity and save time on tasks. In effect, Heureka Group extracts more value per employee without overworking their staff.
"For example, a colleague used to spend five hours a week on a task. She now spends one hour. Or the marketing guys—Keboola integrates all the marketing channels they use into one reporting view."
In addition to the uptick in productivity and performance, Heureka Group also enjoys cost savings and a better overview of their marketing channels, customer acquisitions, and total return on investment. Easily accessible data helps the company pinpoint issues and address problems before they escalate. The holistic view also enables the company to identify potential growth opportunities.
"They control our cost of investment. We try hard to make the data simplify the lives of people in the company—not as a kind of strategic reporting on a monthly basis, but to give them something every day or every week."
Heureka Group expanded to the point that it needed extensive data reporting and central dashboards to support its network of e-commerce stores. The company's clients and B2B users demanded information that showed the value they could derive from Heureka Group’s services.
“We knew that our B2B partners and clients needed some data to be able to clearly evaluate the functioning of Heureka Group.”
At first, Heureka Group could not allocate developer resources to work on those dashboards, so it turned to Keboola for help.
Michal had a pleasant surprise when he found out that Keboola also developed a feature that provided Heureka Group's partners with direct and secure access to the data. They also have the option of plugging in their devices to stream the data via an API.
"Now, Keboola is the place where we prepare data every day. We would run the data for a night, complete some transformations or orchestrations that we want to prepare. And in the morning, the e-shoppers come and have full access to the insights they want."
Reports that run on Keboola are used by 5,000 e-commerces each month, and they are downloaded 500k - 1M times per month.
Apart from driving internal decision-making and helping clients justify their investments, Heureka Group also uses Keboola to build in-demand data products.
For example, Heureka Group can ascertain appropriate price points, product demand levels, and customer brand affinity for market insights beyond the standard company or product data. Keboola provides a birds-eye view of markets, competitors, and brand performance, allowing Heureka Group to offer solutions their e-commerce clients need.
"We have been doing really well in data sales for the last year. And even big brands and companies or even e-shops come themselves because they see our data-oriented content which we publish on LinkedIn.”
Michal considers Keboola’s solution to be a unique offering that is a step ahead of traditional data gathering. Instead of relying on customer surveys and internal sales data, Heureka Group users can leverage informed data that leads to actionable business operations.
Keboola helps us to prepare market data for clients, about their audience and enrich their reports. In this fiscal year, we earned 11M CZK (450K EUR) from this type of data and we see great interest among brands and e-shops in these kinds of reports.
As with many things in business, time is often in short supply in the data analytics department of Heureka Group. In the age of automation, any tool that helps you save time is a welcome one. Michal asserts that "time freedom" is one of the most significant gains Keboola has given him and his team.
Michal considers Keboola an integral part of his day-to-day work.
"We do everything in Keboola. When one of the investors or management team asks me about something, Keboola has the quick, easy-to-understand answers we need."
Data management is fast becoming a top priority for more companies, regardless of their industry. For Michal, it has always been of paramount importance. He believes more companies will eventually realize the inefficiencies they’re putting up with and search for better solutions.
“In my opinion, every company, at one time, finds out that it wants to optimize internal processes. Keboola is great for this as it connects almost everything. Automation is the basis of everything, and it will make work easier and save a lot of time.”
Throughout our talk with Michal, we can tell that he values a data management system that is simple to use and ultimately capable of delivering a positive impact on productivity. Such performance is critical. With the right platform and an intelligent approach, you can maximize the value of your data and your team.
Improve your data management today. Get in touch with our team and take advantage of better data automation today.
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