Tableau Lunch and Learn in SLC on 6-10-2014 (Bill Yetman and Adam Davis)

Data Driven: The Ancestry.com Journey to Self-Service Analytics

Bill Yetman – VP EngineeringAdam Davis – Data Visualization Team Lead

Salt Lake City | 10 June, 2014 | 11:00 - 1:00PM MDT

Agenda

I. Our Story

II. Challenges & Solutions

III. Successes

IV. Future Opportunities

Our StoryTableau’s Role in the Ancestry Data Strategy

3

Traditional BI Tool Challenges

● Dashboarding Bottleneck

● Team of 3

● Analysts wouldn’t use it

● Steep learning curve

4

The Search for a Self Service Tool● Executive Challenge to become a Data Driven Org

● Needed to move quicker with discovering and sharing insights

5

Self Service Options Explored

● Microstrategy Visual Insight

- Training

- Workshops

● Microsoft BI POC

- Power Pivot

- Power View

● Tableau Evaluation

- 2 Week

- 30 Desktop users

6

Tableau Evaluation Findings

● 2 Weeks

● 120 Views created

● Excel users were quickest adopters

● Prizes Awarded

● Most Colorful

7

Challenges & SolutionsOvercoming the challenges of a self service model

8

Adoption Explodes

● In 9 Months

● 100 Desktop Licenses

● CPU Server License (Access for Everyone)

● 820 Views

● 250 Workbooks

● Went from struggling with BI tool user adoption to everyone wants to use it.

9

How do you avoid the “Wild West” of reporting?

10

Approved Reports Portal

11

SuccessesWins with Tableau

12

PR Mother’s Day Campaign

● Featured in news Articles

● Wall Street Journal

● Washington Post

● Time.com

● NY Daily News

● Featured as Viz of the Day on Tableau Public

● Bullet one or paragraph heading

● Paragraph 2 contains first bullet point

- Paragraph 3 contains secondary bullet

13

PR Mother’s Day Campaign (cont.)

14

A/B Testing Team

● Self Service at work

● 40 requests to analytics for A/B test analysis in 2014

● Received 3 to date

● Built a dashboard in 3 days w/ Tableau Desktop

● Bullet one or paragraph heading

● Paragraph 2 contains first bullet point

- Paragraph 3 contains secondary bullet

15

Future OpportunitiesWhat’s Next

16

Vision for the Future

● Hadoop & Hive

● Data exploration

● Data Dictionary

● Additional departments in organization

17

Questions?

Thank youBill Yetman, byetman@ancestry.com

Adam Davis, adam.davis@ancestry.com