MyCamper's Data-Driven Transformation with Fivetran

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MyCamper, a Swiss start-up likened to the Airbnb of campervans, faced a significant challenge in managing and analyzing the data collected on its web platform. The company recognized the importance of this data, but initial attempts at analytics were laborious and time-consuming, involving manual extraction of data from Excel spreadsheets. Using Google Analytics proved to be easier but was limited in scope. As an early-stage start-up, MyCamper had more pressing priorities and lacked the in-house skills to manually build out data pipelines. This resulted in a gap in data analytics that needed to be filled. The company also struggled with historicizing data in a way that could be retrieved for analysis. They were unable to track specific data sets, compare historical data to present, or even have a comparable baseline.

MyCamper is a Swiss start-up founded in 2015 by Michele Matt. The company operates as a platform for the rental of recreational vehicles and campervans, connecting vehicle owners with holidaymakers looking to rent. The idea for the business was born out of the founder's frustration at having his campervan unused in the driveway for 90% of the year. MyCamper quickly grew to become the Airbnb of the campervan/RV community. The company recognized the importance of data collected on its web platform from the start and sought to leverage this data to improve its services and operations.

MyCamper partnered with BI Concepts to develop a modernized analytics cloud platform that could ingest data from multiple sources into a centralized data warehouse for analytics. BI Concepts introduced Tableau to surface insights and Snowflake as a cloud data warehouse. This allowed for a central repository where data could be transformed using Fivetran Transformations and prepared for reporting. Fivetran was used to manage data delivery from source to destination, ensuring MyCamper's data is always accurate and up to date in Snowflake. Fivetran Transformations simplified the process, providing an instant snapshot of the camper owner database to know what campers were available for rent on their site and which campers were booked. Data is sourced primarily from MySQL, MyCamper’s transactional database, and Salesforce, which holds customer information. The next phase is to analyze additional accounting data, using Fivetran to connect sources to their data warehouse to answer questions pertaining to Financial Analytics.

• The implementation of the modern data stack has transformed MyCamper's operations. The company now has faster access to data around target customer groups, which has been a significant win. A capacity dashboard shows the status of the rental fleet and provides a useful indicator of the best times for hiring out campers. This information was previously unavailable to owners, but now they can better plan when to use the vehicle themselves and when it’s most profitable to make it available on MyCamper. The data team can now run SQL queries and create reports with insights that were previously unavailable or too time-consuming to compile. The company has been able to grow its customer base quickly by maximizing resources and saving time.

• Faster time to key metric analysis
• Automation saves on engineering hires
• Insights improve owner/renter experience