Success Story: Sika
Success Story: Sika
22. October 2021
What’s up in Google Cloud?
10. November 2021
Success Story: Sika
Sika stabilizes web analytics platform through Wabion Analytics Consulting
Takeaways:
- To optimize its website, Sika relies on a web analytics platform that combines Google Analytics, BigQuery and Google Data Studio.
- To optimize the web analytics platform, Sika relies on the data analytics expertise of Wabion.
- Thanks to Wabion Analytics Consulting, Sika has reduced costs, improved security and increased the performance of the web analytics platform.
Sika is a specialty chemicals company with a leading position in the development and production of systems and products for bonding, sealing, damping, reinforcing, and protecting in the building sector and motor vehicle industry. Founded in 1910, Sika today has subsidiaries in 100 countries around the world and manufactures in over 300 factories. Its 25,000 employees generated annual sales of CHF 7.88 billion in 2020.
As winner of the Swiss Innovation Award 2019, Sika stands for innovation in all areas. In order to meet the diversified information needs of global customers, Sika IT relies on Google Cloud for comprehensive data analytics relating to the company’s website.
As a leading Public Cloud provider, Google Cloud covers everything from databases to predictive analytics to ensure that you get the most out of your business data. The individual products are easy to combine. Wabion has, for example, developed a data analytics platform for AXA — Switzerland’s leading insurance provider — which combines Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, Dataflow and BigQuery.
The right mix of internal and external expertise
As a central internal service provider for an innovation champion, Sika IT is committed to continuously optimizing its own offering. While looking for a competent partner for a technical audit of the existing system and tool landscape in the area of big data and data analytics, Sika IT came across the Google Cloud Premier Partner Wabion. Wabion has extensive expertise in the use of Google Cloud for data analytics from projects for companies such as AXA, Swiss Steel and Callpoint. With this wealth of experience in their backpacks, the Wabion experts set out on the following tasks:
- Review: Wabion compared the existing data analytics setup around the Sika website with best practices in terms of costs, governance, security, operation excellence, reliability and performance & efficiency. The program also included an evaluation of the interaction between the tools used.
- Consulting & Enabling: In a DeepDive workshop, Wabion presented a catalog with recommendations for optimizing the existing solution and reducing risk.
- Support: The certified and award-winning Google Cloud experts from Wabion are still available to the Sika IT team to implement the proposed measures with “expertise on demand”.
The coordinated interaction of the tools used
Like many global companies, Sika pursues a multi-cloud strategy and uses the offers of various hyperscalers. For the web analytics platform, the company relies on leading data analytics solutions from Google Cloud, i.e. a combination of Google Analytics, BigQuery and Google Data Studio:
BigQuery, Google Cloud’s serverless and cost-efficient data warehouse is at the core of the Sika web analytics platform. Based on data from Google Analytics, the web analytics KPIs (number of visits per country, time spent per page, downloads, etc.) are calculated in BigQuery. The data visualizations and the requested reports are created in the Google Cloud Studio.
During the review, Wabion subjected the existing architecture of the Sika web analytics platform to a thorough examination. Based on both own and adapted Best Practices, this technical audit resulted in a series of recommendations for the future setup:
- Costs: Taking into account the often industry-specific, regulatory requirements, the data center location for data storage and data queries affects the costs. As an experienced Google Cloud partner, Wabion found the ideal location for Sika for the relevant workload and estimated the cost risk when activating additional services such as streaming for real-time analytics.
- Governance & Security: In order to prevent risks such as data loss, Wabion recommended, among other things, an adjustment of the project structure on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in combination with detailed new rules for access and editing rights.
- Operation Excellence & Reliability: The choice of the ideal data center location not only affects costs, but also facilitates the operation of the web analytics platform. Wabion also advised Sika on closing data gaps and restructuring the data in order to optimize the interaction between BigQuery and Google Data Studio.
- Performance & Efficiency: Wabion’s Google Cloud expertise was particularly useful for the assessment of the existing setup in BigQuery. A comprehensive to-do list was created, ranging from revising the SQL queries to activating services improving performance such as Google Analytics Connector and setting up an SLA with Google.
Presenting the recommended measures in a deep dive workshop, Wabion provided the Sika IT team with a guide to mix their own know-how with Wabion’s expertise for optimizing the web analytics platform in the best possible way.
The solid plan for the future
There are various formulas for success not only in specialty chemistry, but also in cloud computing. The Wabion Analytics Consulting has several positive effects on the Sika web analytics platform:
- Lower costs, more efficiency: The centralization of the restructured data in the ideal Google Cloud region ensures better performance, which can be combined with cost reductions.
- A better service: The consistent alignment of the web analytics platform with the business logic enables a better understanding of customer needs with real-time data.
- Expansion on a solid basis: The adjusted structure of the Sika web analytics platform facilitates the integration of new data sources and thus a further increase in the quality of the offer.
A clean setup also paves the way for using data analytics beyond web analytics. With BigQuery Omni, powered by Anthos, Google Cloud has been offering a data analytics solution across various hyperscalers since 2020. Companies that pursue a multi-cloud strategy like Sika will primarily benefit from this.