Executive summary:
Independent digital agency, Sparro by Brainlabs, needed to significantly scale up their data reporting to meet the needs of their growing client base. Seeking an alternative to their existing Google Sheets-based system, they adopted Funnel — a solution that efficiently managed large data volumes without requiring complex coding knowledge.
This change enabled Sparro's team to focus more on strategic projects, resulting in innovative data analyses that significantly increased revenue and improved business efficiency. The collaboration with Funnel marked a major step forward in Sparro's data-handling capabilities and overall growth trajectory.
Key results:
- Funnel enables Sparro’s team to build innovative data projects, generating an additional $150,000 in revenue to date.
- Through increased automation, Funnel saves Sparro 25,000 hours every year
- Reduced instances of broken reports, improving customer relationships.
Agency profile:
Sparro was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2013 by brothers Morris and Cameron Bryant. Over the past decade, Sparro has grown into a robust team of over 120 professionals, offering a full suite of marketing services across paid media, search engine optimisation, creative production and data science. Their maxim to be Australia’s most Impactful Agency drives them to focus on delivering meaningful, business-changing work that makes a positive difference to clients — all while encouraging professional growth for their staff. In 2024, Sparro was acquired by Brainlabs — an independently-owned global media agency — further expanding Sparro’s international reach and capability to deliver impact for clients.
The challenge - Streamlining data complexity:
Sparro by Brainlabs stands out in the Australian digital agency landscape as a pioneer— known in the market for its holistic and transparent approach to digital marketing, with a strong focus on fostering client growth.
Sparro’s expertise lies in designing comprehensive, multi-channel campaigns that effectively blend digital and traditional media insights across mediums, all driven by meaningful data-driven strategies. As Sparro’s client portfolio expanded and the intricacies of marketing data evolved, the agency faced challenges in maintaining stable performance reports to clients.
At the time, Sparro’s main mode of reporting was through Google Sheets, a great tool for reporting and working with data — but limited in size and complexity. Sparro utilized a data integration tool that updated their spreadsheets with new data and then applied custom data transformation logic to further enhance the data. However, as Sparro’s data volumes and data transformation complexity expanded, issues in platform reliability emerged.
Failing downloads and authentication issues became common occurrences, leading to hours of manual work. This became a strain on internal resources but also became a frustration to clients who relied on consistent, reliable access to these reports. Jordan Taylor, Data Science Specialist at Sparro, told us how reporting reliability issues were causing stress throughout the organization, increasing the urgency to find a new solution.
The solution - Embracing automation with Funnel:
Initially, Sparro was recommended to use Google BigQuery as an intermediary between the platforms and Google Sheets to increase the stability of reports. BigQuery is a powerful data warehouse that can certainly handle large data volumes and transformation complexity, but it requires users to be knowledgeable in SQL and its pricing is largely based on data computation. According to Jordan, this combination posed a significant blocker for Sparro:
“We can’t really have our customer-facing teams using BigQuery, even if they knew SQL, because of its data computation costs. Our Google Cloud Platform bill is substantial already, and if someone inadvertently queries terabytes of data, costs will add up quickly”.
Seeking a more user-friendly and cost-effective alternative, Jordan explored various solutions. Through meticulous research, including sifting through online reviews and discussions, he compiled a shortlist of potential tools. Funnel emerged as a promising candidate for its ability to manage large-scale data and transformations, without the complexities of coding or prohibitive cost models. Convinced by its capabilities following a comprehensive product demo and a proof of concept, Jordan selected Funnel as the ideal solution for Sparro's evolving needs.
The results - Enhancing efficiency and revenue:
Migrating reporting to Funnel brought immediate and significant benefits, Jordan reports. Previously, his team spent hours each month troubleshooting and re-authenticating data sources. When factoring in the increased efficiencies in building reports, Jordan estimates that Funnel saves Sparro a staggering 1000 hours every year in troubleshooting, and frees up an additional 25000 hours per year through reporting automation.
Now, this time is reallocated towards more value-adding activities. A key factor in this efficiency boost is Funnel's extensive connector library. It has enabled comprehensive reporting across all of Sparro's platforms, eliminating the need to develop time-consuming, bespoke solutions in-house. For platforms lacking native connectors, Funnel's custom connectors are a game-changer. "Custom connectors are incredibly useful and a massive benefit," Jordan remarks. "We provide Funnel with the API documentation, and they build and maintain these connectors, which is quite remarkable."
This shift in reporting capabilities has had a profound impact. The data team now engages in innovative projects that were previously unfeasible. One notable project involved analyzing the relationship between purchasing behavior and customer lifetime values in Shopify. Another, focused on sentiment analysis from Google My Business data, helped the customer achieve a significant reduction in churn rates and an increase in positive review sentiments.
These advanced data projects, a stark contrast to the previous system which was limited to basic report maintenance, have generated over $150,000 in revenue to date. This outstanding success highlights not just the transformative impact of Funnel's solutions, but also the strategic and innovative application by the Sparro team, jointly driving significant improvements in business efficiency and revenue generation.
