Replacing 2000 Dashboards That Needed Manual Updates
Objective
Automate data reporting into metabase dashboards.
Obstacle
Implementing complex user levels and permissions.
Outcome
Live dashboards integrated into WordPress and email.
Background
Octopus Legacy offers after-life services, including wills, lasting power of attorney forms, life insurance, and probate. A key part of their business involves collaborating with charities on campaigns promoting legacy donations. Despite substantial investments in advertising, charities often lacked visibility into the timing and amount of incoming donations, creating challenges for forecasting and campaign optimisation.
To address this, Octopus Legacy initially implemented dashboards in Looker Studio. However, maintaining and enhancing these dashboards proved highly inefficient, as updates to charts required replication across over 2,000 dashboards manually.
Challenges
Scalability: Looker Studio faced major scalability challenges, requiring extensive manual effort to maintain and update over 2,000 dashboards. Additionally, the lack of a centralised system meant there was no single source of truth for dashboard updates, leading to inefficiencies and inconsistencies across reports.
Functionality: Existing dashboards lacked interactive elements and reliability, limiting actionable insights for charities. They lacked the ability to restrict access, preventing charities from viewing only their own data securely.
Solution
Iterative Design: In our initial review we found that simply swapping out the visualisation tool would be enough to meet Octopus Legacy’s time and budget, but recommended implementing a full data stack if they wanted to scale this further.
BI Tool: Conducted a comprehensive review of the dashboard use cases and identified Metabase as the optimal solution for scalability and cost-effectiveness. We conducted a gap analysis to ensure that Metabase was able to fit all of the Octopus’ teams wish list and found that we would be able to consolidate the structure by creating a single master dashboard. Filters could then applied to ensure each charity accessed only their specific insights without compromising data privacy.
The Proof Is In The Numbers...
£89
66
4
Implementation
Metabase Dashboards: The transition to Metabase Pro brought significant improvements to Octopus Legacy’s dashboard management processes. Previously, maintaining and updating dashboards required extensive manual effort, making scalability a challenge. Additionally, we introduced interactive maps into the dashboards, providing a more dynamic and intuitive way for charities to explore geographic data.
Iterative Build: While our initial focus was on migrating to Metabase, we recognised the need for a more comprehensive data infrastructure. Over time, we expanded beyond dashboard management to build a full data stack, integrating multiple data sources to provide a more holistic view of Octopus Legacy’s operations. As a result, Octopus Legacy was able to grow its internal data expertise, eventually hiring dedicated data professionals to further develop and refine its analytics capabilities.
