Dataiku > Case Studies > U.S. Venture Leverages Dataiku to Streamline Data Efforts and Save Thousands of Hours

U.S. Venture Leverages Dataiku to Streamline Data Efforts and Save Thousands of Hours

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Big Data Analytics
Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning

Applicable Industries

Automotive
Transportation

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation
Warehouse & Inventory Management

Use Cases

Time Sensitive Networking
Transportation Simulation

Services

Data Science Services

The Customer

U.S. Venture

About The Customer

U.S. Venture is recognized as an innovative leader in the energy and transportation industries. The company operates in market segments such as industrial lubricants, tires and parts, alternative fuel applications, transportation strategy optimization, and fueling infrastructure, distribution, and equipment. U.S. Venture’s family of brands includes U.S. Oil, U.S. Gain, U.S. AutoForce, U.S. Lubricants, U.S. Petroleum Equipment, IGEN, Breakthrough, and Tire’s Warehouse. Founded in Appleton, Wis. in 1951, the company has over 2,500 employees and operates in many different industries, including automotive aftermarket, energy, technology, and more.

The Challenge

U.S. Venture, a company operating in diverse industries such as automotive aftermarket, energy, and technology, faced significant challenges in managing and analyzing customer data due to its complexity. The company struggled with creating enterprise tools and processes that could eliminate silos and promote collaboration. The Data and Analytics team at U.S. Venture, established in 2018, initially focused on data warehousing and basic reporting. However, they soon realized the need for advanced analytics at scale. The team faced difficulties in maintaining models and disparate data sources, which could quickly become unmanageable without the right people and tools. Additionally, the team's data scientists and analysts were using a varied set of tools and coding mechanisms, leading to a lack of standardization and collaboration. The individual team members built their own components that lived in different places and were created via their own tools, saved on personal computers, with no visibility for other team members about where projects were and how they were created or functioned.

The Solution

To address these challenges, U.S. Venture implemented Dataiku, a tool that allowed the team to consolidate several processes that were coded differently into a single recipe, making them reusable by everyone. This solution also combined governance and collaboration, providing documentation and project visibility in one place. It automated processes that analysts and data scientists were managing in manual steps, saving time. Excelion Partners, a data science and analytics consulting organization, helped the U.S. Venture team get connected with and trained on Dataiku. The collaboration enabled U.S. Venture and their data scientist counterparts at Excelion to directly collaborate with each other on the same platform. This proved invaluable as it enabled the U.S. Venture team to align with and communicate to the business on their projects. The Data and Analytics team utilized Dataiku to create end-to-end, repeatable flows to reduce the effort and increase the collaboration and accuracy in their data science services.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Dataiku not only resulted in significant time and cost savings but also fostered a culture of collaboration and reuse within the Data and Analytics team at U.S. Venture. The tool provided a standardized way of working, driving productivity, and gaining confidence and trust from leadership. The team was able to reinvest the time saved in other areas and focus on the art of storytelling with data. This allowed the data scientists and analysts to create richer relationships with the business units and partner directly to determine the best data-driven decisions. The use of Dataiku also enabled data analysts and other data-minded individuals to step in to do a project rather than data scientists, freeing up the data scientists to work on new, more complex projects and giving U.S. Venture a larger, more capable analytics organization.

Quantitative Benefit

The implementation of Dataiku reduced the time taken to analyze a new market from 60-100 hours to just three hours, representing a 95% to 97% time savings.
The use of Dataiku also resulted in hard cost savings by avoiding the cost of expensive point software solutions that address only a specific use case.
Dataiku enabled the Data and Analytics team to source, cleanse, model, and share repeatable data science solutions without needing to look to a third party for a software solution for each use case.