About Konrad Schlatte
Konrad Schlatte is a data engineer from the UK whose team works to foster data-driven strategy and execution at PensionBee. He uses his expertise in Python APIs and Machine Learning workflows to improve the usability, efficiency, and effectiveness of PensionBee's data analytics tools. Before joining PensionBee in 2019, he worked in leadership roles at Bank of America, Nomura, and New Link Consulting.
Konrad talks to us about how PensionBee centralizes disparate data sources to optimize its data pipeline. However, he and his team had difficulties consolidating multiple data sources into a single platform using tools like Fivetran, a software with limited flexibility. Frustrated with difficult-to-use, rigid technology, his team searched for a solution that eventually led them to Airbyte.
About PensionBee
PensionBee revolutionizes the pensions industry by digitizing pension providers' plans. We offer customers an easy-to-use dashboard called the 'Beehive,' which streamlines the process of accessing pensions anytime, anywhere.
What was the problem?
Just-in-time visibility for customers
As pensions constantly change, our customers need access to up-to-date data at all times so that they can make crucial financial decisions.
"Our customers needed a holistic platform that merged multiple pension pots from various employers, and a single 360-degree view of up-to-date data from different information sources to make financial decisions quickly."
A deeper understanding of the customer journey
A key component of our marketing teams' job is tracking how customers interact with the platform. We can answer questions such as what makes people join PensionBee, why they sign up, and what they do afterward. However, we lacked a holistic picture of our customer journeys.
"Without such an integrated 360-degree view of customer engagement data, it was challenging for internal product teams to reach the right customers at the right time through push notifications or email messages."
Our old architecture was not good enough to solve these problems because:
Complex and fragmented architecture
With a significant amount of data to track, spreadsheets were not a suitable solution. The fragmented data spread out over multiple platforms, with client profiles stored in Salesforce CRM, marketing campaign records on social media platforms, and other information in spreadsheets.
"With this spread of information, it was not possible for our marketing team to easily track upper and lower marketing funnel activity by channel or drill down by customer in a short amount of time. Even with tools like Looker, a commonly used BI visualization software, it was still challenging to merge and modify large amounts of customer data, leading to inefficient data processing."
How did we discover Airbyte?
As our platform grew to over 476,000 customers, we had to find a way to provide up-to-date data to customers to make appropriate financial decisions. Moreover, all our customer data couldn’t be viewed on a single platform to determine customer touchpoints accurately. So in searching for a solution to consolidate data from Salesforce, Facebook, and Google Spreadsheets, our team discovered Airbyte as a leading ETL tool.
How was the problem solved?
Simplified architecture
Our data team can stitch together different client, campaign, and marketing data sources into a singular, coherent platform using Airbyte. The result was a significant reduction in processing time and easy management of multiple data sources. In addition, Airbyte can resolve data pipeline problems by analyzing the consolidated information rather than merging it. Now, our team can build a platform that provides a 360-degree view of upper and lower funnel marketing activity.
Increased flexibility and lower costs
We leverage Airbyte's high-processing, open-source model to consolidate data, removing the need to map the model manually. The marketing cloud connector allows our product teams to collect engagement data to understand customer profiles better. With Airbyte's open-source model, our team can develop new connectors at no added costs, accommodating our company's growing customer base.
How do we feel about using Airbyte?
One of the many attractive features Airbyte offers is its flexible platform, capable of handling large amounts of data for marketing cloud integration. With Airbyte's help, our team can successfully shift the focus from worrying about data syncs to what is essential to our customers - our pension management platform. It is also beneficial for us to have a community that can answer questions and shares ideas along the way.
"With Airbyte, we were able to save up to 10% of the marketing budget. In addition, the savings obtained with Airbyte helps the company reinvest into the business to lead to a higher return on marketing investment."
Airbyte is a vital component of our platform. In the future, we hope to use Airbyte to power various use cases, including working with financial data and further enhancing our marketing cloud by leveraging newer connectors.
