Business intelligence for online marketplaces
How biGENIUS helped implement the company-wide data warehouse within just 9 months, integrating 7 in-house and 2 online sources, improving the level of standardization, expandability and maintainability.
Scout24
Scout24 Switzerland AG is the leading network of online marketplaces for vehicles, real estate and classified ads.
Challenge
New requirements defined by the Scout24 top management as well as the shareholders Ringier and KKR to measure the performance of the online marketplaces were the trigger for the development of a company-wide business intelligence solution. The extensive (K)PIs were previously laid down independently by the business and the Scout24 marketplace managers. Neither the online systems nor the analysis solutions of the online marketplaces were able to provide the required key figures in a satisfactory quality and within the desired period.
Scout24 was looking for a suitable partner with many years of expertise in the design, implementation and maintenance of BI solutions to build the new business intelligence solution. Trivadis stood out from their competitors thanks to their high level of competence (Trivadis is now part of Accenture - read about biGENIUS Spin-Off 2021).
Solution
The solution includes a historicized data warehouse created according to the companys' DWH/BI best practices:
- Source systems
- Marketplaces
- Sources for analysis
- IIS logs
- Long term
- Evaluations
- Trivadis biGENIUS® generator
- Trivadis DWH/BI best practices and blueprints
- Simplified architecture of the Scout24 business intelligence system
APPROACH
Work started immediately in October 2014. The essential basics for setting up the data warehouse were established within just 3 weeks and approved jointly. These were tailored to customer needs in productive and clearly structured workshops and then captured in a basic BI concept.
Basic BI concept
- BI governance and BI strategy principles
- BI organisation / BI competence centre
- Data warehouse / principles of business intelligence architecture
- Standards and guidelines
- Choice of technology incl. recommendation
The first implementation unit, the integration of ImmoScout24, CRM and NET-Metrix, was launched in November 2014. Thanks to the central development tool - biGENIUS® data warehouse generator - and the establishment of the basic BI concept, the release was made available to the customer in the required quality in December 2014. After completed delivery in January 2015, the first productive evaluations were created using the new data warehouse and presented to management.
Roadmap
- Establishment of the basics, basic BI concept
- ImmoScout24, CRM and NETMetrix DWH
- Production
- AutoScout24 and Google Analytics DWH
- Anibis DWH, implementation and handover
- Simplified Scout24 data warehouse roadmap The data warehouse was implemented to such a degree already by the summer of 2015, that the defined key figures could be evaluated across all three Scout24 online marketplaces and be processed for management and the investor KKR.
- The high standardisation of biGENIUS® and the associated simplified maintenance of the data warehouse enables Scout24's Competence Centre BI to look after and further develop this themselves upon completion of the project in August 2015.
The creation of a long-term data store was a central objective in order to clean up and free up the source systems. A historicized data store fulfils these requirements and forms the basis for further stages of expansion of the data warehouse.
In addition, a high level of standardisation, expandability and maintainability were required to enable Scout24 to develop the data warehouse independently and at low cost. The use of the biGENIUS data warehouse generator enabled these requirements to be met and also supported the iterative approach in the development of the data warehouse.
SCOPE / CHARACTERISTICS
- Historicized data store and data warehouse core
- 7 in-house and 2 online sources
- > 650 objects in the loading process
- 14 marketplace-specific data marts consisting of 15 fact tables and 34 dimensions
Key benefits
1. Close collaboration between the Scout24 and project teams was very important for the successful implementation of the project. The solution was specified in several agile iterations, developed and agreed on together.
2. The timely and intensive involvement of all participating partners made it possible to implement the solution on time and on budget.
3. The close support of the business and the person responsible for BI during the delivery tests enforced the understanding for the new solution and confirmed the needs and requirements had been understood.
Client technologies:
- Microsoft Power BI (PowerView, PowerMap and Designer)
- Microsoft Datazen Publisher and Viewer
- biGENIUS generator (implementation) with: data warehouse modelling and generator, documentation backend technology
Backend technologies:
- Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services 2014
- Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2014
- Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 2014
- Microsoft Transact SQL
- Microsoft Datazen Server
- biGENIUS generator (operation) with: lifecycle management, and load control and monitoring
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