Short presentation on how Ancestry came to use Tableau for visualization of our data.

1. Data Driven: The Ancestry.com Journey to Self-Service
Analytics
Bill Yetman – VP Engineering
Adam Davis – Data Visualization Team Lead
Salt Lake City | 10 June, 2014 | 11:00 - 1:00PM MDT

2. Agenda
I. Our Story
II. Challenges & Solutions
III. Successes
IV. Future Opportunities

3. Our Story
Tableau’s Role in the Ancestry Data Strategy
3

4. Traditional BI Tool Challenges
● Dashboarding Bottleneck
● Team of 3
● Analysts wouldn’t use it
● Steep learning curve
4

5. The Search for a Self Service
Tool
● Executive Challenge to become a Data Driven Org
● Needed to move quicker with discovering and
sharing insights
5

6. Self Service Options Explored
● Microstrategy Visual Insight
- Training
- Workshops
● Microsoft BI POC
- Power Pivot
- Power View
● Tableau Evaluation
- 2 Week
- 30 Desktop users
6

7. Tableau Evaluation Findings
● 2 Weeks
● 120 Views created
● Excel users were quickest adopters
● Prizes Awarded
● Most Colorful
7

8. Challenges & Solutions
Overcoming the challenges of a self service model
8

9. Adoption Explodes
● In 9 Months
● 100 Desktop Licenses
● CPU Server License (Access for Everyone)
● 820 Views
● 250 Workbooks
● Went from struggling with BI tool user adoption to
everyone wants to use it.
9

10. How do you avoid the
“Wild West” of reporting?
10

11. Approved Reports Portal
11

12. Successes
Wins with Tableau
12

13. 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
13

14. PR Mother’s Day Campaign (cont.)
14

15. A/B Testing Team
● Self Service at work
● 40 requests to analytics for A/B test
analysis in 2014
● Received 3 to date
● Built a dashboard in 3 days w/ Tableau
Desktop
● Bullet one or paragraph heading
● Paragraph 2 contains first bullet point
- Paragraph 3 contains secondary bullet
15

16. Future Opportunities
What’s Next
16

17. Vision for the Future
● Hadoop & Hive
● Data exploration
● Data Dictionary
● Additional departments in organization
17

18. Questions?

19. Thank you
Bill Yetman, byetman@ancestry.com
Adam Davis, adam.davis@ancestry.com