Salsify: Replacing Manual Spreadsheets with SaaS Analytics

What’s next

One way Atkin measures the effectiveness of BT Partners’ work is that the company is now almost entirely self-sufficient. “I believe that speaks to the quality of BT Partners’ consultants,” he says. “I know if I ever need assistance, I can reach out. We’ll definitely leverage them if we have heavier workloads in the future, but for now, we’re really doing well and making great use of Domo.”

Going forward, the company may move from a user licensing model to a consumption model to provide additional scalability and flexibility. It’s also considering developing and white-labeling Domo dashboards to be included as part of Salsify’s consumer platform.

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About Salsify

Brand manufacturers, distributors, and retailers understand their success lies in winning on the “digital shelf” — that virtual space where products are displayed online across various digital channels. We’re talking about the brand’s own website, plus eCommerce giants like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart.com, along with social media platforms and other digital points of sale. Salsify is the company leading brands turn to for the win.

Salsify’s SaaS solution integrates product information management (PIM) and digital asset management (DAM) capabilities alongside actionable insights to help orchestrate compelling product experiences anywhere consumers shop online. To gain similar insights into its own operations, Salsify turns to the Executive Analytics team at BT Partners.

The Challenge

Gordon Atkin is Salsify’s Vice President of Technology and Business Platforms. A seasoned data analytics professional himself, he explains the challenges Salsify was experiencing that prompted it to make a change. “We had a data lake solution built on Amazon Athena. It proved helpful in providing metrics around our product’s usage, but it wasn’t effective at delivering insights surrounding our internal financial, sales, and marketing operations.”

Much of the company’s SaaS data analytics wound up in spreadsheets. “We’d export data from the source, import it into Excel, and then build a graph,” Atkin adds. “That’s not scalable. We needed a tool to provide our internal users quick access to decision-making data — without all the manual touchpoints.”

Why BT Partners?

Atkin and Salsify’s CFO teamed up to find a scalable, approachable, and affordable SaaS data analytics solution. “We have a great team of data analysts, but they didn’t have the right tools,” he says. The company’s primary data sources were Salesforce, NetSuite, and Adaptive. “We wanted better data surrounding our pipeline, sales forecasts, opportunity tracking, and deep insights into cost, revenue, and budgets.”

Atkin says the company briefly considered a combination of Snowflake and Fivetran but balked at the cost. “It could easily have added up to half a million a year,” he says. “Then we looked at Domo. Domo is an all-in-one solution — you don’t have to buy an additional data modeling layer. As we reviewed Domo, we could see it would easily get us to where we wanted to go and could scale beyond that as needed.”

Domo referred Salsify to BT Partners, an implementation partner with a high level of experience and expertise in the SaaS space. Atkin was quickly impressed. “At the end of the day, a project’s success comes down to the people involved. The firm you select to work with is important. BT Partners is a mature, stable partner with a solid practice and a history of success. Their consultants are experts.”

The Solution

BT Partners and Salsify worked together on an implementation plan. “We decided to start small, get some early wins, and grow the initiative over time,” Atkin explains. “We started in the Finance department, and BT Partners went to work. They got familiar with our data and our requirements and worked through the inevitable challenges. At the same time, we were building an internal team that could take over and “own” Domo going forward. BT Partners helped us train them and get them ready to go.”

The Finance rollout was a quick success, and the team next turned its sights on the company’s Marketing and R&D departments. “Throughout, we’ve been careful not to push adoption but rather to let the results draw users in,” Atkin explains. “Once people saw what we were doing with Domo, they wanted to use it, too, and we’ve seen adoption rates steadily increase. We’ve got about 110 users now and see that rising to 200 soon.”