Recognizing the challenges of aligning marketing efforts with sales outcomes, Samuli Ahola, Director of Digital Sales at Virta, sought an analytics solution. Introducing Databox to the team’s workflow helped them prioritize resources efficiently, promoting a more strategic allocation of budget and time.
It’s no secret that electric vehicles (EVs) are going to continue increasing in market share, but turning this vision into a reality demands a major overhaul of existing infrastructure in fuel-forward countries. That’s the future Virta has been working towards in Europe.
Founded in 2013, Virta specializes in electric vehicle charging points and charging platforms, both designed to assist customers in supporting renewable energy. Leading the sales team is Samuli Ahola, the Director of Digital Sales. With a background in marketing, Samuli is committed to shaping Virta’s digital sales strategies.
Operating with lean resources, Virta needs to make sure every euro and every minute they invest counts. The problem was, they couldn’t connect their marketing efforts to sales results. Without an effective way to centralize their data, the team struggled to ensure that their efforts and budget were creating the results they needed. Samuli pointed out, “You rarely see people able to connect the dots between marketing and sales in a way that you can actually measure euros.”
The lack of visibility also meant that Virta’s resource allocation was often based on assumptions rather than concrete data. As Samuli highlighted, “At the end of the day, it comes down to prioritization. We have limited resources—where should we put our money and effort to get the most results?”
Recognizing the need for a change, Samuli knew Virta needed a solution that could tie marketing campaigns, spending, and sales outcomes together, allowing them to prioritize resources more strategically.
Samuli knew exactly how to tackle these challenges. Having used Databox successfully in a previous role, he introduced the tool to Virta’s Sales Director, who, at the time, was overseeing both Marketing and Sales.
Taking charge of the implementation process, Samuli played a key role in integrating Databox into the team’s workflow.
The team quickly integrated their sales and marketing tools, consolidating all their data into Databox. They then build dashboards to monitor performance, including a company-wide dashboard tracking sales and marketing activities.
Leveraging Databox’s Metric Tools, Samuli was also able to create calculations to better understand their spending. He explained, “You can pull out data from Facebook Ads, see how much you’ve spent in a campaign, then look at the number of actual contacts, leads, SQLs, and opportunities in our CRM. When you do the calculation, you can easily see what you’re paying for.”
To help track the sales budget, Samuli scheduled to receive a snapshot of his dashboard on the last day of every month. This monthly review, especially when reviewing annual results, helped provide a detailed month-to-month analysis. He notes, “I have snapshots saved for every month, so I know exactly how the data looked in each month.”
From a marketing standpoint, team members were encouraged to build their own dashboards tailored to their unique responsibilities. Samuli explains, “We decided that everyone is going to report numbers from their specific area of work, and, not surprisingly, Databox has been the answer for every single person. Our social media guy builds his own dashboard where he measures the effectiveness of paid social channels.”
According to Samuli, implementing Databox across sales and marketing teams has completely changed the culture at Virta. They’re now more data-informed, making decisions based on hard numbers, not just gut feeling. “It helps to drive the culture in the company to be more data-informed. Decisions can always be backed up with data, and that’s been the biggest change,” Samuli emphasized. “We can always look at the data and see what’s working and what isn’t.”
With access to more complete data, Virta now uses its dashboards in everyday decisions. According to Samuli, there’s no more arguing because the data makes their decisions clear. “If there’s something I want to change or there’s a need to approve purchases and such, I can always back it up with data. And I always do. Then, it’s no longer an argument—it’s just ‘Hey, look at the numbers. We need to do this,” he explains.