Seriös Group x tombola: Transforming tombola's data processes and reporting

tombola, a leading gaming company, aimed to enhance its data architecture and overall data strategy to improve operational efficiency, data scalability, and reporting reliability. The initiative, led by Kevin Marsden, tombola’s Head of Data, was to accelerate the implementation of a highly scalable data platform, to enable faster insights and improved decision-making across the business.

The Challenge

tombola's data warehouse had evolved organically, leading to strong analysis but a fragmented data infrastructure. Operating under a decentralised model, analysts delivered insights to their business areas, but without a unified data platform to ensure consistency. As a result, tombola faced several challenges. The heavy reliance on Tableau Prep caused performance bottlenecks and slow reporting, while the absence of proper governance led to duplicate calculations and multiple versions of the truth, resulting in discrepancies across reports. Key business metrics were defined differently across teams, making it difficult to maintain reporting accuracy.

The absence of enterprise-grade data infrastructure also limited scalability, and the current setup made it harder for the data and insights teams to work together efficiently. To support tombola’s growth ambitions, they needed a structured approach to its data to establish a governed single source of truth, improve its reporting reliability, and enhance the efficiency of its data infrastructure.

The Solution

To drive transformation, tombola needed a clean break from its legacy data processes, as following a comprehensive review key flaws were identified, providing a clear roadmap for improvements. Seriös ONE Launchpad, a data platform accelerator, enabled the rapid unification of systems, and the development of a scalable data solution that could quickly deliver value, not only to the data and insights teams but to the wider business. Deployed into tombola’s infrastructure and tailored to the teams chosen tech stack; it ensures full control of tombola’s data.

By applying best-practice data modelling, Seriös ONE Launchpad established a single source of truth for more reliable reporting and insights. By shifting data transformation logic to the data warehouse, this improved efficiency and scalability of the data platform.

Governance frameworks were introduced to standardise business measures, ensuring consistency and trust in the reporting and insights. Collaboration between the data and insights teams improved, allowing in-house leads to take ownership of the new setup and maintain control.

The solution: a fully integrated, end-to-end data pipeline, from source systems to accurate, reliable reports.

The Impact

"By working with Seriös Group to establish best practices and implement Seriös ONE Launchpad, we've successfully transformed our data into a true strategic asset. With a unified and governed data platform, we can gain real-time insights, achieve a single view of our customers, and streamline our operations, allowing us to make smarter, faster decisions. While it's still early days, we're starting to see a reduction in 'time to value', and we’re already reducing the time it takes to build reports.” - Kevin Marsden, Head of Data, tombola

The collaboration between Seriös Group and tombola delivered significant improvements, reducing time spent on troubleshooting, resolving data inconsistencies, and enhancing performance. This led to faster, more reliable reporting, demonstrated by the KPI Marketing Report. Previously, this critical report which consolidates all financial and business metrics, struggled with large data volumes, could only be aggregated weekly and often failed to run. Since deploying Seriös ONE Launchpad, it now runs daily, with hourly updates if needed, providing daily granularity and enabling faster, data-driven decision-making.

By implementing a repeatable framework, tombola can now scale its data operations effectively, reducing inefficiencies. The BI team can develop reusable components, saving time on writing complex SQL queries when building reports, reducing the time it takes to deliver value from data to the business. The new dashboards have received positive feedback from key stakeholders, including the Head of Growth and Marketing and Commercial Director, highlighting the project's success.

With Seriös ONE Launchpad, best practices, and a governed data platform in place, tombola has transformed its data into a strategic asset, enabling real-time insights, a single view of customers, and automations that save hours. The project has also enhanced marketing personalisation and customer segmentation, allowing for more targeted strategies.

Early signs indicate that tombola's 'Time to Value', a key success metric, is improving. With this solid data foundation, tombola is well-positioned to drive data-driven decision-making and long-term business growth.