“It’s analysis, business intelligence, and data science made in one package, for research. When I started exploring Displayr, I fell in love. I couldn’t go back.”
less time from data to insights
dashboards created within a week
dunnhumby helps retailers and brands perfect the science of shopping by unlocking the value of data and creating engaging experiences that put the customer first.
As a senior analyst for dunnhumby, one of the world’s leading customer data science companies, Wang Wang provides connected analysis across projects, combining both qualitative and quantitative insights for her clients.
Wang works across several different teams, and this comprehensive view allowed her and her supervisor, Harley Titchener, to spot an opportunity to provide more comprehensive deliverable options to their clients.
At the time, analysts on their team were mostly creating PowerPoint deliverables, which involved a lot of charting and for larger projects, could require weeks of work to manually input the data that clients wanted to see.
Harley, Wang and the market research team were working on a project with a very tight deadline, and they knew that it wouldn't be possible to create a PowerPoint document with all the information that was required.
“We would have probably had about three different people involved in the charting,” Harley says. “It was the kind of project that built three projects into one. So, you'd have had three different people charting, and cumulatively, about six weeks of work.”
The right tool could help the team create powerful, dynamic dashboards that their clients would love, in a fraction of the time. Now Wang and Harley just needed to find it.
Wang compared several different platforms to find the best fit for dunnhumby’s research team. The team needed software that was designed specifically for survey analysis and was tailored to the way they work. She explored a range of options, including Tableau, and found that most lacked the automation she was hoping for.
“When I evaluated different software tools, one of the key drawbacks I found was that you had to do a lot of data manipulation before you could even import it to the platform,” Wang says. “And in many cases, you would need to hire a developer to build something that met your needs.”
When Wang started testing Displayr, she immediately knew she’d found a tool she could get excited about.
“It’s analysis, business intelligence, and data science made in one package, for research,” Wang explains. “When I started exploring Displayr, I fell in love. I felt like I couldn’t go back. I immediately started thinking about how to create a business case for it.”
Making the case for Displayr was easy: dunnhumby was already using Displayr’s sister tool Q, and having compatible dashboard software was both logical and appealing.
“We use Q for a lot of our analysis,” Harley says. “It seemed logical to use Displayr as well. That way we had a direct link between both tools, as Q speaks naturally to the dashboard and functionality of Displayr.”
When Wang and Harley set up Displayr, they were thrilled with how specialized it was: it was clearly designed with the exact needs of researchers in mind.
“Displayr just gives us so much more control, in terms of importing the data and creating the visualizations, as well as the research techniques it allows,” Wang says. “And afterwards, it’s so easy to update.”
With Displayr, they were able to get a head start on the project, and began building the three dashboards before their fieldwork was even complete.
“It allowed us to capture data in the field, bring that live data in, and build the dashboard off the back of that before the fieldwork was fully complete,” Harley says. “We knew that we could do that easily because once the fieldwork was completed, we could update the interim data with the click of a button.”
And once the first dashboard for the project was completed, making the other two was straightforward and very efficient.
We built three dashboards in the time it takes to build one. I built one, and then for the other two dashboards, it was just a matter of updating the data.
Wang says, “There were a few minor changes I needed to make, but it was a really smooth process. And it allowed us to deliver against a very tight deadline.”
Wang and Harley estimate that without Displayr, it would have taken three people a combined total of six weeks (two weeks each) to do the charting required for their client’s project. With Displayr, that time was cut down to two weeks.
“We did about six weeks’ worth of charting in two weeks, so it's quite a saving,” Harley says.
In addition to the time they save, using Displayr allows their team to take greater ownership of the full data process.
“Before, if it was a more complicated dashboard-type project, we would have had to bring in other teams, but now we don’t need to,” Harley explains. “It means that we're fully in control of everything. We can shape the deliverable. We can work more collaboratively with our clients. So that allows us to have a greater impact.”
Displayr has also allowed them to spend less time inputting data, and more time on their analysis. This adds value to each project for their clients, as they have more time to dedicate to crafting their insights.
Most importantly, client stakeholders love the dashboards because they allow them to manipulate the data and deliver long-term analytical benefits to their organisations.
