Mr. Tomoyuki Okawa, General Manager in Business Analysis Department, Corporate Planning says that Tableau enabled DARTSLIVE to work more efficiently, analyzing data from deeper perspectives—in a shorter amount of time. Mr. Okawa also describes how Tableau helps them analyze millions of records of data sent from the machines everyday, delivering insight to improve their business.
Tableau: Tell us more about DARTSLIVE. Mr. Tomoyuki Okawa, General Manager, Business Analysis Department, Corporate Planning Division: DARTSLIVE performs planning, manufacturing, and sales for online dart machines, and places them at a number of shops and dart bars. We also perform business by focusing on darts such as event planning and conducting, and management for dart bars, etc. Tableau: What kinds of data do you work with? Mr. Okawa: Millions of play results in dart games are coming in per day. We utilize Tableau by storing the data as raw data, and aggregating and re-using it by using the data warehouse for easy analysis, then, putting it in Tableau. The data is stored in the relational database, and a data warehouse is used in order to analyze the data. One of them, Yahoo! Big Data Insight, is used to store service data, sales data, and the related promotion data, etc. Then, the multiple data are divided from there and re-combined on Tableau with the data placed in a columnar-type database. Tableau: Was there a particular problem you were facing? Mr. Okawa: Absolutely, the files collecting the data were scattered around, and it was totally difficult to pull them together. Therefore, we try to solve the problems by using Tableau Cloud at the same time in order to collect the files of Tableau in one place. Tableau: What are the most important benefits of Tableau Cloud? Mr. Okawa: One of the major reasons for adopting Tableau Cloud is that the server and the infrastructure are provided without our preparation. I was also very attracted to being able to start from one license. Since it is easy to start it without significant costs, promoting this introduction is a big benefit now by decreasing the personnel cost in the infrastructure area and the in-house cost.
With Tableau, we can now access our data directly and work more efficiently in a shorter amount of time. Tableau also enabled us to analyze more perspectives in deeper ways.
Tableau: How has Tableau changed things? Mr. Okawa: Obtaining the data and reporting by using the data were as costly in time as a half day, and even one or two days if it's longer. However, because Tableau enables the one-stop access, it sometime takes only a few hours or less than one hour at the fastest to complete reporting. Therefore, the staff can work by looking deeply and multi-faced analysis in the data more efficiently by shortening working time as well as performing the work smoothly. Tableau: What roles? Mr. Okawa: We are currently in the stage of promotion to utilize it at the business department with emphasis on the marketing department. Our Development team is trying to perform A/B tests in order to see what new functions they have to create at the actual development site, and the Promotion team is trying to practice self-service BI using Tableau to evaluate the effects of their promotion activities as a part of so called PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle. Tableau: How would you sum up the effect of Tableau on your company? Mr. Okawa: Communications between our staffs were improved because we can use data to tell information in an easy-to-understand way, and it was the first benefit that we experienced after introducing Tableau. The great part of using Tableau is that each staff started being interested in data or having a data mind after they learned how to analyze data by themselves using Tableau. They started realizing that each of them should work on focusing how to utilize the data, as well as how to reduce the hassles to create the actual data effectively. I think that we can now obtain effective results by having the targeted predicated data and numbers without the unclear past experiences for our future business, our planning measures, and event planning or development. Tableau: What would your job be like without Tableau? Mr. Okawa: Well, if we do not have Tableau, we will keep the same work as last year and the year before. Tableau: What has been your impression of Tableau so far? Mr. Okawa: Because I can find ways to be able to perform, and how to practice and observe the data by using Tableau, I hope that it will very much become a step-up tool for my business performance and management.