For Shiseido’s Watashi Plus web services, Tableau is shifting the emphasis in analytics away from things and towards people.
Shiseido Japan Company Limited is taking steps to integrate its various data sources—Watashi Plus web services data, POS data, member information, etc.—all on a cloud-based data management platform (DMP). The company aims to use Tableau to analyze these sources of customer behaviour data to engage with customers during valuable “customer moments,” using the most appropriate channels, including web advertising, email and LINE campaigns, and strategic web services.
The biggest advantage we’ve obtained thanks to Tableau is increased productivity. Before Tableau, it took us a week to make simple changes to a report. Now, we can edit a report in a few seconds and then upload it to Tableau Server in another few seconds.
Tableau: How are you using Tableau at Shiseido Japan?
Goda: We use Tableau mainly for three purposes. First of all, we’re using it to build dashboards to visualize Key Performance Indicators, such as Watashi Plus sales indices. Secondly, we use it to build dashboards for strategy management. We use dashboards for every sales campaign, to see how successful our strategies are and how close we are to reaching our goals. We publish the information on Tableau Server for members to consult as they wish. And third, we use Tableau for ad-hoc analysis. We use Tableau to deploy data on Treasure Data for a deeper analysis.
Tableau: Which Tableau functions and features do you find most useful?
Goda: Before we installed Tableau, we were using a different reporting tool. But we used it only to send cross-tab reports or for ad-hoc reporting using Excel.
Yoshimoto: I like the fact that we can dig deeper into the data using simple operations, examining it from the perspectives we choose. Before, we mainly used Excel for data analysis, but that took a lot of time. With Tableau’s drag and drop feature, it’s easy to tabulate data, dig deeper into it, and analyze it. Those are great features.
Goda: When sharing reports, users find they can grasp the information very quickly. Thanks to Tableau visualization, they get a good idea of the results of an analysis much faster than by cross-referencing data. I’m hearing that staff are using Tableau-generated reports more effectively than before we had Tableau.
Yoshimoto: Now it’s easy to conduct analysis with our user base. It was a lot harder using the Business Intelligence tools we had previously. For example, Tableau’s Level of Detail expressions make it easy to tabulate the lifetime values of individual users.
Tableau: Tell us about your database environment for Tableau.
Goda: For the Tableau environment, we’ve integrated our in-house primary data with third-party data and site access data, all on the Treasure Data DMP. We connect to the DMP via Tableau to perform data analysis. Tableau installation took a little less than two months. We had a data warehouse before installation, so it was simply a matter of publishing the data from there to Tableau Server. That made the transfer to users relatively smooth. After that, it took a little while to get everything in operation, although getting it functional for use was relatively fast.
Yoshimoto: Treasure Data’s DMP and Tableau have excellent compatibility. We enter a query in Treasure Data, and the result that comes out can be output as is to a Tableau Datasource file. We like the fact that we can tabulate data using Treasure Data and then visualize the results with Tableau, with no hassle at all.
Before, only people handling data could see it. But now, with Tableau dashboards and worksheets, many people, including staff handling the brand side of things and EC staff, can share data at the same time and in the same format. In addition, we can send data either as deep or narrow data, at both levels. These are also big advantages.
Tableau: What improvements did you see after Tableau Server made it possible to share dashboards and reports within your company?
Yoshimoto: Well, one improvement is that Tableau has boosted our productivity. Before Tableau, we had to depend on an external partner simply to create a report. We had to set a fee for each report created, and all that was quite time consuming as well. But now, with Tableau, in-house analysts have no trouble creating reports. Then we publish the reports on Tableau Server for sharing. Before Tableau, it took about a week just to make simple changes to a report. Now with Tableau, we can edit a report in a few seconds and then upload it to Tableau Server in another few seconds for everyone to share.
Goda: Since we installed Tableau, I think the biggest improvement is that users can now handle reports more or less as they want. Before, only people handling the data could see it. But now, with Tableau dashboards and worksheets, many people, including staff handling the brand side of things and EC staff, can share data at the same time and in the same format. In addition, we can send data either as deep or narrow data, at both levels. These are all big improvements.
Tableau: What is your next step for using Tableau?
Yoshimoto: At the present time, we only use Tableau in the EC Business Promotion Department, which handles our Watashi Plus web services. But in the future we hope to extend Tableau installation across other departments. For example, we want our brand teams to have a Tableau environment to work in.