How Taos Transitioned from Manual Reporting to Agile Marketing & Saved 10 Hours Every Week

When you’re a small and mighty company, competing effectively with larger enterprises requires having an edge in terms of technology, talent, and product offering.

While Taos had built a strong reputation as a problem solver over 30 years—and a strong product suite that Gartner recognized on its 2020 Magic Quadrant™ top 20 in Public Cloud and Infrastructure products—they needed the advantage of good data in order to expedite their initiatives.

This was the first order of business for Nate Meadows, Head of Digital Marketing and Brand, when he came on board with Taos in January of this year.

Having used Databox before, Meadows knew how powerful it could be for efficiently distributing data across departments, teams, and stakeholders.

Within the first month, Meadows had introduced the team to Databox and integrated it into its robust technical stack.

“I cannot imagine Databox not being in my tech stack.”

Easy Street for Data Insights

One of the biggest problems with decentralized data sources limited trust in the numbers you see on reports. Because Data reporting has traditionally been a manual process of pulling and calculating information for each report-building project (typically destined for a PDF), chances are those numbers have changed in the time between report production and review.

This lag creates a lot of doublechecking, by many people within the organization. 

“Before Databox it was a lot of disparate Excel spreadsheets, presentations & charts, numbers written down on notebooks. There was a multitude of disparate data points that you never knew if they were the latest, or if it was accurate.” 

Meadows knew the team didn’t have time to spend developing reports that created doubt and the need to doublecheck.

Fortunately, with his previous experience using Databox, he knew they could be up and running quickly, even for those without a background in analytics.

“Databox is simplistic enough that anyone can use it but advanced enough at the same time that seasoned data professionals can use it and have strikingly similar experiences.”

Taos’ Top Integrations

And More Comprehensive View + Plan

The Taos team keeps a close eye on a variety of metrics, from SEO and rankings data to conversion and pipeline progression.

Without a way to centralize and contextualize data from this variety of data sources, it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on on a daily basis, and how changes in activity or tactic are affecting the overall performance of the marketing plan. 

“So from top of funnel to down and understanding how our website is performing and how our email marketing is performing….instead of looking all of them disconnected, we’re being able to see them as one collective ecosystem.”

This holistic view of the data that the metrics dashboard provides, allows the team to make decisions based on the best, freshest available insights, quickly address areas that are flagging, and give more fuel to the tactics and campaigns they see creating momentum. 

With the Goals feature, they can take what they’ve learned from the data and effectively set their sights on what’s next.

The insights Databox surfaces give the team license to create data-driven objectives and KPIs across the organization and track them proactively to ensure they come to fruition.

“I’m able to see different goals of what’s happening weekly or monthly and then I’m able to bubble that up to annual. [Databox] gives me both perspectives I need to make more informed decisions and execute different marketing strategies if we need to pivot or change something.” 

Databox has given Meadows and the team an opportunity to see their efforts play out from a variety of angles, and course-correct with agility to get the best results.

A More Efficient Team

Lean teams depend on efficiency to get results, and data efficiency is one of the most important ways to keep teams informed and progressing. For this reason, Meadows and the team have come to rely heavily upon the reporting and analysis features in Databox.

“Now, instead of taking the time to manually pull, compile, and design data into reports for different stakeholders, the team can customize Databoards based on their needs and their audience, delivering fresh reporting and insights with only a few keystrokes. It’s given us the freedom to pull what we need in near-realtime,” said Meadows.

PRO TIP: Another way to quickly build dashboards based on your specific needs is to use some of our prebuilt dashboard templates.

The team can now focus on the activities and projects that will get results and solve problems for their clients, sure that the data will be there when they need it.

“I think that’s what has been a massive competitive advantage for us in terms of marketing––being more agile.” 

With time efficiency comes cost savings, as well. Manual reporting takes costly hours away from other activities.

With Databox, the team can get what they need quickly and act on it nimbly.

Meadows shares that the team is now saving 10+ hours a week in reporting and analysis by using Databoards to get a quick, clear understanding of their metrics.

“Instead of having to work on a report for a couple of hours when the data is instantly outdated and inaccurate and then report on that the next day, I can make gains and cost savings when eliminating those inefficiencies.”