How To Drive Operational Efficiency by Integrating Organization-Wide Analytics

Seznam.cz is a popular Czech internet company that operates one of the largest search engines in the country. It offers a range of online services, including news, maps, email, and a comprehensive advertising platform. Founded in 1996, it has become a key player in the Czech digital landscape, competing with global giants like Google. Seznam.cz is widely recognized for its localized content and services tailored to Czech users. Since 2011, GoodData has been instrumental in helping Seznam.cz optimize its internal analytics capabilities.

Visitors to Seznam.cz per day

4.6M

Employees

1,700

Customized GoodData dashboards

Active dashboard users

1,800

The company

Seznam.cz has expanded into various sectors, evolving far beyond its origins as an internet search service. In addition to Mapy.cz, Novinky.cz, and Email.cz, the company has now ventured into television and radio. Last year, Seznam.cz expanded its portfolio further by acquiring the printing firm Borgis. As a result, its offerings now span internet, print, radio, and television content. With 1,700 employees spread across the Czech Republic, access to accurate data is crucial to the day-to-day operations of its various departments.

Examples of how Seznam.cz currently uses GoodData:

Business Reporting

Seznam.cz leverages GoodData primarily for business reporting. The platform allows Seznam.cz to deliver custom reporting to hundreds of users, tailored to their specific roles and requirements – from account managers and account executives to sales department managers and the board of directors. By connecting dozens of internal and external databases to the LDM, Seznam.cz can efficiently monitor high-level metrics across the company and get detailed insights for informed decision-making.

Direct Mailing

Seznam.cz sends thousands of direct emails per month. GoodData enables the tracking of detailed statistics like open rate (OR), click-through rate (CTR), and conversions or unique events. Antonín Klepáček, Manager of Automated Care, explains: “GoodData allows us to clearly display basic mailing metrics enriched with conversion data from service admins and, for example, the financial benefit of individual mailing scenarios. This allows us to effectively evaluate individual scenarios and the contribution of our mailouts.”

HR Reporting

Seznam.cz tracks recruitment across the entire company with detailed HR reporting. The team can see which advertisements were successful for specific positions, the ROI for each recruitment effort, and candidates' employment status. Funnel charts and other visualizations make this data insightful for both the HR department and the wider company, providing valuable insights into recruitment strategies and outcomes. “With GoodData, we most often monitor the reposting of traffic to our career pages, which is key for us when recruiting talent,” says David Koláček, Seznam.cz Recruiting Manager. “I personally like the fact that my colleagues from the analytics team can customize reports according to our current needs. For example, if we monitor advertising traffic, we can respond flexibly, by changing the texts of individual advertisements.”

External Partner Reporting

Seznam.cz uses GoodData to provide detailed statistics to external partners. For example, partners can access data about their podcasts, including the number of viewers and listeners, download frequency, advertisements applied, and revenue generated. Since Seznam.cz engages in revenue sharing with these partners, this information is crucial for both parties to monitor performance. Hundreds of users benefit from these insights, enhancing their understanding and management of content.

The challenge

Previously, Seznam.cz’s data and storage were scattered across various platforms, making unification a challenge. They needed assistance in consolidating this data, summarizing it, and scaling their dashboards to provide user-friendly, low-maintenance analytics. The goal was to establish a single source of truth, particularly for their financial, business, and marketing teams, as well as the entire company.

Seznam.cz's business analytics team was already capable of preparing and maintaining dashboards, but they needed a system that could easily meet the requirements of different departments. This had to include customizable metrics for different divisions, simple sharing of analytics between teams, and quick onboarding of new users.

“We considered other options like Tableau and Looker, but GoodData offered the ideal combination of affordability and capability. We chose the solution primarily for its simplicity and its ability to adapt to our needs.”

David Kroupa Manager, Business Analytics team, Seznam.cz

The solution

The GoodData team listened to Seznam.cz’s internal analytics requirements and implemented a system tailored to their needs. They swiftly created a new analytics environment that unified the data (via a semantic model) to create a single source of truth. A multi-tenant architecture allowed Seznam.cz to easily distribute personalized analytics instances to different teams. The business analytics team was then able to create dashboards for different departments, and staff could consume analytics in a way that suited them best — such as filtering for the specific information they needed.

Once Seznam.cz realized how easy it was to onboard new users and have them create their own reports or dashboards with GoodData’s drag-and-drop UI, Seznam.cz expanded GoodData’s use across the company. Initially, the most developed areas were business and finance analytics. However, the use of GoodData soon spread to other areas like marketing, where the team could, for example, monitor the results of promotional efforts and campaign attribution.

“GoodData is very easy to use. You don't need to build a logical data model each time. You already have one prepared, and this allows you to quickly create the reports and dashboards you need.”

David Kroupa Manager, Business Analytics team, Seznam.cz

GoodData also empowered Seznam.cz’s business analytics team to provide ad hoc analysis. Before, this had been complicated due to huge datasets, but GoodData enabled Seznam.cz to swiftly upload data and manage metrics, allowing the analytics team to start performing new analyses within minutes.

Some of Seznam.cz’s Favorite GoodData Features

Technical Support: GoodData’s support team is always available to troubleshoot issues.
Customized metrics: Possibility to create individualized metrics that are many rows long.
Simple onboarding: Easy to introduce new users to the dashboards.
Sharing capabilities: Multitenant architecture makes it easy to share relevant data with different teams.

The result

Today, Seznam.cz boasts 88 customized dashboards with around 500 active users on their business dashboards and a total of 1,800 active users overall. All their analytics (excluding web) are now integrated into GoodData, making it a vital tool across the majority of departments. The integration has led to significant time and cost savings due to the ease of maintaining the dashboards and the insights gained.

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