CASE STUDY
L
ooker, a leading data platform
company, has announced that recurring
payments platform, GoCardless,
has deployed Looker to drive significant
productivity gains across its business,
universally adopting data analytics to improve
efficiency across multiple departments
including finance, product and compliance.
Since deploying Looker, GoCardless has
significantly modernised its approach to
data, replacing its previous processes that
were outdated and time-consuming. Prior to
deploying Looker, GoCardless employees had
limited access to data, with its analysts tasked
with responding to requests for a significant
number of reports – taking up valuable time
and typically requiring them to deliver various
dashboards following ad hoc requests.
Today, 95% of employees at GoCardless
have a Looker account, with three quarters
(75%) of them using it in a meaningful
way on a monthly basis. Requests made to
the data team have now been reduced to
nearly zero, where previously at least a dozen
analytics tickets were created weekly.
WE’VE CREATED THE FIRST GLOBAL
NETWORK FOR RECURRING PAYMENTS,
DESIGNED AND OPTIMISED FOR TAKING
INVOICE, SUBSCRIPTION, MEMBERSHIP
AND INSTALMENT PAYMENTS.
level – significantly freeing up both this team
and the data analysts who were supporting
this process on a regular basis. Additional
features such as scheduling enable updated
reports to be regularly shared with team
members – including, specific reports shared
on a weekly basis with the CEO and relevant
teams – without the requirement for people
to manually update and send each week.
GoCardless also uses Looker to track
the impact of product feature releases,
including gaining a better understanding
of the sales funnel, detailing where revenue
drivers exist and how its products are being
used by customers.
Automating processes
file permission sets that include version
control, access to certain documents and
the viewing and edit history of such files.
Looker also enables GoCardless to maintain
its customers’ data privacy, through
the organisation and anonymisation of
personal information, and management of
this data at scale.
“We wanted to foster a culture in which
everyone has access to data to inform
decision-making, as well as ramping up
efficiencies. Since working with Looker, we’ve
been able to open up access to data across
the business and we’ve seen near universal
adoption of the platform,” said Jon Palmer,
Head of Business Intelligence at GoCardless.
Enabling regulatory compliance
GoCardless’ financial planning and analysis
(FP&A) team has saved four days per month
by using Looker to automate the process of
data analysis at the executive and board
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Looker’s data platform has improved
regulatory compliance for GoCardless
through features such as managing
“The Looker team has been integral to
onboarding and training our employees
to enable a self-help culture across the
company. This has also freed up the analysts
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