"Data Driven - The Ancestry Journey to self-service Analytics" December 10, 2014 Grand America Hotel Adam Davis - Data Visualization Lead

1. Data Driven: The Ancestry Journey to Self-
Service Analytics
Adam Davis – Data Visualization Lead
December 10, 2014 – Salt Lake City

2. Agenda
I. About Ancestry
II. Our story
III. Challenges & solutions
IV. Successes
V. Future opportunities

3. Ancestry
Who we are
3

4. 4

5. World’s largest online family history resource
5
Approx. 2.7 million paid subscribers across all family history sites

6. Data drives our business
6
• 14 billion digitized historical records
• 60 million family trees
• 6 billion profiles
• 200 million sharable photos, documents and written stories
• 10 petabytes of data

8. 8

9. Our story
Tableau’s role in the Ancestry data strategy
9

10. Traditional BI tool challenges
• Dashboard bottleneck
- Team of 3
- Analysts wouldn’t use it
- Steep learning curve
10

11. The search for a self-service tool
• Executive challenge to become a data
driven org
• Needed to move quicker with discovering
and sharing insights
11

12. Self-service options explored
 Microstrategy Visual Insight
- Training
- Workshops
 Microsoft Power BI POC
- Power Pivot
- Power View
 Tableau Evaluation
- 2 week
- 30 desktop users 12

13. Tableau evaluation findings
• 2 weeks
• 120 views created
• Excel users were quickest adopters
• Prizes Awarded
- Most colorful
- Most viral
- Most put together
13

14. Self-Service Model
Challenges & Solutions

15. Adoption explodes
• In just over 1 year
• 100 desktop licenses
• 8 core CPU server license
 (Access for Everyone)
• Over 1500 Views
• More than 450 Workbooks
• Went from struggling with BI tool user
adoption to everyone wants to use it.
15

16. 16
How do we avoid the
“Wild West” of reporting?

17. Governance vs. Self-Service
• Extracts
• Projects
• Portal
17

18. Extracts
• Kick off batch file in ETL
process using Tabcmd
• Update within an hour
of Data Warehouse
• Maintained by BI team
18

19. Projects
• Sandbox project for
all to use
• Projects for analysts
• Data Portal Project
19

20. Portal
• Consolidate Reporting
• Approved reports by FP&A, Analytics & BI
20

21. Looking for a solution
21

22. Solution
22
http://getbootstrap.com/

23. DEMO: Approved reports portal
23

24. Tableau Public
Success with public data

25. 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
25

26. PR Mother’s Day campaign
26

27. “Our most talked about
and successful campaign.”
-Matt
27

28. Home Ownership
• Featured in news articles
- Washington Post
- Time.com
28

29. 29

30. 30

31. Back for More
31

32. Future opportunities
What’s next
32

33. Vision for the future
• Hadoop & Hive
- Data exploration
# of views in 1 year: 1500+
• Adoption by additional departments in organization
- Find the “Excel Jockeys” with Big .XLS workbooks
- DNA Science Team
• Expand Functionality
- Metric monitoring
- Server tools
- Future Mobile 33

34. Final Thoughts
Key Takeaways
34

35. Key Takeaways
• Get Desktop in the hands of data driven individuals.
• Find a way to consolidate approved reporting.
• Start using Tableau Public.
• Get out of your own way and let Tableau work.
35

36. Thank you
Adam Davis, adam.davis@ancestry.com