How Specsavers created a dynamic data culture and drove time savings with DataCamp

The challenge: data skills gaps, reduced efficiency, and strain on data specialists

Specsavers, a leading provider of optometry, audiology and other healthcare services, faced critical challenges in their data analytics processes.

Heavy reliance on manual Excel work and significant skill gaps in PowerBI and Databricks hindered employee efficiency and prevented them from fully leveraging data-driven decision-making at scale.

The central analytics team faced an overwhelming influx of requests, resulting in backlogs and delays in delivering actionable insights.

Decentralizing data analytics was urgent for Specsavers, and the need for data upskilling became clear.

Specsavers partnered with DataCamp for Business to kickstart its data upskilling program. The goals of the program included:

• Bridging the Power BI and Databricks skill gaps to automate Excel work and offload central analytics teams

• Increasing Data Literacy among leadership and employees outside data teams to foster data-driven decision-making

• Encouraging internal mobility and providing opportunities for employees to start data science careers

The solution: custom learning pathways with DataCamp

To cater to different learner personas, Specsavers collaborated with DataCamp to design tailored learning paths, which included:

• Data Scientist With Python Career Track, designed to help Analysts, who previously entirely relied on Excel, to learn Python, Machine Learning and Spark fundamentals, and potentially transition to a Data Scientist role.

• SQL and PySpark for Data Analysis Track, designed for employees without coding backgrounds to help them transition from Excel to Databricks

• Data Visualization in Power BI, Data Storytelling, and Data-driven Decision Making Tracks, designed for employees who want to enter a Data Analyst career or automate routine Excel work with Power BI.

• Data Literacy Track, designed to bridge the communication gap between non-technical employees and data teams. It was popular among leadership, as learning paths didn’t require coding and could conveniently be completed on mobile phones.

Most learning paths also featured DataCamp Assessments that helped prove the knowledge and were a valuable prerequisite for employee promotion.

Specsaver's decision to partner with DataCamp was based on the platform's functionality, flexibility, support, and ROI focus:

• Learner experience: Compared with other learning providers, DataCamp’s active learning experience and gamification proved to be the most user-friendly, which was crucial for high learner engagement and motivation at Specsavers

• Flexibility: Specsavers needed to serve different personas, and DataCamp’s custom learning paths, competitions, and projects helped them tailor data upskilling to each persona's needs. With Specsavers learners in eleven countries covering multiple time zones, DataCamp allows everyone to develop their data skills at a time that works for them.

• Industry-leading customer success team: Having a dedicated Customer Success Manager from DataCamp helped Specsavers launch creative learning programs, such as Hackathons and Challenges. This was crucial to building excitement around data upskilling, with learners competing for DataCamp swag.

• Reporting & Analytics: With DataCamp’s admin dashboard, Specsavers could quickly understand which formats, courses, & competitions worked best for their learners and adjust the program’s contents accordingly.

The results: increased productivity, tool adoption, and data confidence

A vibrant data culture

Specsavers fully leveraged DataCamp’s custom learning paths and custom projects in DataCamp Workspace to create organization-wide challenges and hackathons. This contributes to a vibrant data culture by introducing healthy competition and organization-wide collaboration centered around data upskilling on DataCamp.

The highlights of Specsavers’ activities include:

• The Right Royal SQL Challenge involved watching a DataCamp webinar, completing an Introduction to SQL course, and submitting a hands-on project in DataCamp Workspace — with the winner receiving swag and prizes from DataCamp

• A Data Science Hackathon, which challenged teams at Specsavers to apply Machine learning techniques to a company’s dataset. Using DataCamp Workspace, Specsavers created a custom Jupyter notebook project, where participants could apply their skills after completing a 3-week preparation program. During the hackathon, Specsavers experienced a surge of DataCamp license requests and doubled their DataCamp for Business subscription seats to accommodate new learners.

Committed to continuous learning, Specsavers plan to launch a new Marathon challenge. This upcoming event aims to promote skill retention and solidify learning as a daily habit, with learners completing bite-sized practice exercises on DataCamp every day.

"We've begun to build a "ritual" using DataCamp to set fun challenges followed by presentations for our internal data community," said Lorraine Pocklington, Data Community Manager at Specsavers.

"So far, we've had around 45 completed challenges. Over time we'll build an expectation around these challenges, which we're running on an approximately monthly schedule. Using DataCamp's gamification, we'll be able to generate some real energy for data learning."

The open invitation to use DataCamp and use of gamification definitely contribute to the positive data culture. Based on colleague feedback Specsavers won the Best Place to Work in Data award at the British Data Awards.

Measurable impact

Key results of the program include:

• 115 employees learning with DataCamp and completing 507 courses, 41 projects and 168 skill assessments. 

• Specsavers experienced significant time savings of 3-4 hours per employee per week, thanks to targeted learning of Power BI, Python, PySpark, and SQL skills. This enabled a transition from Excel to utilizing Power BI. With the knowledge of Python functions, employees could schedule analytics using Jupyter Notebooks, resulting in earlier data refreshes. Completing courses on time series empowered analysts to apply forecasting techniques to their daily tasks. Mastering Spark and lambda functions helped data scientists to write more efficient and comprehensible PySpark scripts

• Data Literacy career track completions, Hackathons, and company-wide Challenges proved the adoption of a Data Culture and enhanced Data Literacy among employees from diverse backgrounds

• Completing dedicated custom career tracks facilitated career transitions within Specsavers, including promotions from non-data-related roles to Data Analysts and Data Analysts to Data Scientists.

• As employees acquired new data skills and adopted Power BI and Databricks, the organization has noticed a decreased load on core analytics teams. Recently doubling their subscription seats, Specsavers plan to continue democratizing data skills across the organization and fostering more efficient analytics workflows.