In this video, Fanjean SHI, PVCP Director of Analytics, Data and Acquisition and Julien Soulard, PVCP’s Data Steward, discuss the situation at PVCP. Joining him are Artefact’s Fabien Cros, Clara Mendes Sampaio, Claire Turpin, and Marine Meyer; and Constance Coutard of Google-GMP, each of whom added their expert insights.

Challenge: Improving data quality across the entire enterprise

Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs needed to be able to exploit all the data available in their ecosystem. To do so, they had to be able to:

  • Improve their data quality to make it more reliable
  • Join and structure data so it’s clean and can be shared
  • Help businesses democratise data use and exploit this shared data for personalisation to build enhanced customer relationships.

Artefact knew that Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs was going to need help to recoup revenues lost due to the COVID-19 crisis: a 3% drop in worldwide tourism industry growth was forecast for 2020, while there was a total of 40B€ estimated lost revenue during the lockdown in the tourism sector in France over the last year. But some regions are expecting to see modest rises in tourism in the coming year.

“An interesting point to highlight about this project is the use of this unique period we’re living through – it’s an ideal time to invest in data quality and data governance – because these are prerequisites and fundamentals, we all need if we are to use this period intelligently and anticipate the future.”
Fabien Cros, Data Consulting Director at Artefact, added:

To meet the objectives of PVPC, it was necessary to:

  • Prioritise Data Quality and Governance above all other subjects to work efficiently and reliably in order to have an immediate impact on the business

  • Form a committed SWAT team composed of experts ready to work hand-in-hand with PVCP on complex subjects in order to correct current data quality issues – but also to prevent new ones

  • Create a new Data Steward role with a network of SPOCs (Single Points of Contact) to reduce quality problems and produce high-performance analytics available to all departments.
“The objectives of the data quality project with Artefact were simply to have a better cohesion in the quality of the data and to set up processes to help us be more efficient in the way we deal with the different subjects,”
clarifies Julien SOULARD, PVCP’s newly-appointed Tracking & Data Collection Specialist.

Solution: A SWAT team to roll out a Data Governance project

PVCP and Artefact worked closely for several months on these complex data science projects.
To lay the essential groundwork, each company needed to be able to work in a SWAT team configuration. SWAT is an American military term meaning Special Weapons And Tactics, but in the business world, a SWAT team is composed of experts in various fields that come together to rapidly and efficiently validate new business ideas within an organisation.

The PVCP-Artefact SWAT team:

  • Prioritised and ultimately delivered value more quickly

  • Mobilised different skills to optimise global knowledge

  • Targeted only one value chain at a time for optimal efficiency

  • Delivered with a stronger focus on results

The PVCP-Artefact SWAT team was dedicated to generating more high-quality sales leads, optimising the media budget, and improving processes and workflow.

With the team in place, a major Data Quality Project was begun, composed of Data Governance, Tool Creation and Utilisation, and Monitoring, with speed and efficiency as driving factors.

To kick-start the Data Governance facet, a PVCP – Artefact Data Steward pairing was proposed, while the Data Steward and SPOCs were trained on using data quality tools and methodologies.

The Data Steward is responsible, among other things, defining data quality standards, monitoring KPIs, and holding a weekly update to monitor and investigate all current data issues with the data quality SPOCs.

To address these issues, several tools were created, most importantly the “golden source” – a data quality dashboard which tracks every KPI and signals every anomaly. There’s also a ticketing tool set up which enhances communication when it comes to the way queries are posed.

“Today the teams are 100% autonomous in all their roles.”

Clara Mendes Sampaio, Artefact’s Senior Data Consultant who paired with Julien in his new role as Data Steward, affirmed that

Results: Time & money savings, greater accuracy, happier employees

The project rapidly showed appreciable benefits:

  • +28% improvement in algorithm accuracy for improved decision-making

  • 44% increase in time saved on data comprehension, location and accessibility

  • +30 employee NPS points added after implementation of the data governance frame (shift to higher added-value activities for people)

The project also improved the data quality on PVCP’s analysis and piloting tools, thanks to the implementation of different processes, including weekly appointments, Mantis tickets and a dashboard for monitoring various tools.

“Before, our data was a bit like Swiss cheese: full of holes. […] We’ll continue to work with PVCP on new projects over the coming year: Google Analytics 4, GTM Server Side, that sort of thing. But now, we have a much more sound basis that will allow us to approach data problems more efficiently.”.
Julien was pleased with the results achieved:
“Thanks to this project, we’ve cleaned up data we don’t need, and best of all, we’ve saved 15% on our Google Analytics consumption. I think that working with Artefact allows us to guarantee our leadership and competitiveness.”

At Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs, the outlook is positive.