At Criteo, everything seems to be measured in billions. Last year, the company generated 741 billion ads; reaching 1 billion Internet users with targeted ads and acquiring $19 billion in post-click sales.
It’s not just the statistics that are massive. With over 60 analysts, their Business Intelligence team is also pretty huge. Needing a tool which would enable them to easily extract and explore this data quickly led them to Tableau. The analysts now use Tableau Desktop to publish dashboards to the business and thanks to Server, 800 business users are now able to access and interact with the thousands of dashboards created every year.
In 2012, a study was launched to select the best tools to use in its new BI system. In the selection, Criteo decided:
- To use Hadoop to store raw data
- To use HP Vertica database for data warehousing
- To use Tableau as the front end data analysis and reporting tool
So, with Tableau as the chosen tool, all Criteo needed was help in implementing it. InterWorks, being a Tableau Gold Partner, were soon selected and brought Tableau expertise to Criteo teams in two areas:
Technical expertise:
With a thousand users (up to 300 simultaneously during peak periods), the right setup and optimisation of Tableau server was critical to ensure the best possible performance. François Jehl, in charge of analytics infrastructure, says “the help of InterWorks has been instrumental. They enabled us to define architecture for the highest performance. They have also helped us set up our procedures and create our own tools to operate with Tableau Server”.
User training and coaching:
InterWorks organised a first level of training with Criteo, to teach the basics of Tableau. This was shortly followed by customised workshops, to help the developers with their very specific needs. InterWorks went on to facilitate numerous onsite sessions in Paris, New York, Munich, London and Tokyo. Patrice Chaperon, central BI team manager in charge of data analysis says, “InterWorks helped our teams make the best possible use of Tableau and have largely contributed in defining our best practices. The internal post-training evaluations have always been excellent”.
If you believe your company could benefit from any InterWorks consultancy, please let us know using the comment box below, and we’d love to help.
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