Tradera is Sweden’s largest circular marketplace with 6 million visits per week. Every three seconds something changes hands on the site, that’s 1,000 items an hour. It also means huge amounts of data that the company can benefit from thorough analysis and insights. With Solita and Tableau, it has created a fast-moving, data-driven organisation that seizes business opportunities while creating the best user experience.
Tradera has worked with circular consumption for over 20 years, an area that is more relevant now than ever before. Sustainability is high on the agenda and our consumption patterns are changing. Tradera has seen strong growth in recent years, as more and more people have become aware of circular trading.
“We really are noticing a major change in attitude; in recent years awareness of sustainability and circular consumption has increased enormously”, says Irene Werge, Tradera’s CFO. “And with the covid pandemic, our growth has increased even more; people have had time to clean out their garages and sell things they no longer use”, Irene says with a laugh.
Needed a rethink
Our collaboration with Tradera started in 2017 when Tradera realised that it needed to review its data management. The company was developing rapidly and wanted to make better use of its data in several of its business areas. At the time, Tradera was using an analytical tool that was so complex that it was difficult for the company to do the analysis itself. They had to rely on external developers for support, which took time and caused frustration.
“We were simply stuck in a consultant dependency”, says Irene Werge, “and, as a data-driven company, we understood the need to be able to do more and faster analysis ourselves. We decided to rethink and, after doing some research, we settled on Tableau as a BI tool. We turned to Solita because we knew they were good at Tableau.”
Our team started by setting up the structure of Tradera’s data warehouse, arranging licences, and making sure the implementation and rollout worked as they should. The result is a simple, user-friendly, and visually appealing tool that the whole business can use.
“We are incredibly happy and use Tableau for everything”, Irene tells. “We use it for all kinds of business analysis, to measure traffic to the site, shipping options, payment solutions, sales monitoring, and so on. It’s easy to use the tool and to visualise key insights.”
A versatile tool
A practical example of how Tableau is used is to measure and analyse various types of cases concerning customer service.
“It allows us quickly to detect the pain points of product users and to take immediate action by clarifying communication and improving user experience on the marketplace so that our members don’t have to contact customer service”, says Irene.
Of course, business analyses are key. But another important element is that you also use the tool to monitor your own employee engagement.
“It is vital for us that our employees use the product themselves, that they buy and sell things from us, so they can gain an understanding of the user, learn to develop our product and improve the user experience. This is something we encourage by creating fun competitions, for example. Tableau works very well here, tracking employees’ own sales is both clear and fun”, Irene says.
Long-term relationships
Today, Tradera’s dependence on consultants is all but gone, but Solita is still there in the background, providing support when needed. It acts as Tradera’s Tableau partner, helping it with licence management and being on hand if any questions arise.
“We are excited to be working with Tradera; it is an exciting brand that is so timely right now. We have had a long relationship with both Tableau and Tradera and it is particularly pleasing to go to work when there is such a good match as there has been here”, says Linda Borelius, Chief Partners Officer at Solita. “We really like Tableau because it is easy and fun for the customer to work with the tool. That is its greatest strength.”
“Today, I would say that a majority of our employees use the tool, compared to just a handful that used it before”, says Irene Werge. “This allows us to maintain a much higher rate of development than would otherwise be possible.”
