In today’s fast-paced economy, staying competitive means doing more with less — especially for data teams. The challenge? Delivering actionable insights without expanding headcount or budgets. The solution lies in automation and modern tools that enable scalability and flexibility, empowering lean teams to manage even the most complex data environments.

Managing vast datasets, controlling costs and streamlining operations with limited resources might seem like an impossible mission. Yet, companies like Saks, Paylocity and Dropbox are proving it can be done — with Fivetran as their not-so-secret weapon.

These three companies, despite operating in vastly different industries, share a common success story: using modern technology to scale data operations efficiently and deliver results on a global scale. Let’s explore how they’re doing it.

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Saks achieves 5x productivity gains, enabling advanced AI initiatives

Saks, a global leader in luxury e-commerce, faced mounting challenges in managing complex data needs while scaling operations to support cutting-edge AI initiatives. When CTO Mike Hite joined Saks, his team was bogged down by the need to build and maintain custom ETL pipelines without automated monitoring, causing significant bottlenecks. Developing new data pipelines often took months, limiting their ability to keep up with the growing demand for personalized customer experiences and data-driven decision-making.

Hite turned to Fivetran to automate and simplify data integration, replacing Saks’ time-intensive manual process. With Fivetran, his team centralized data from dozens of internal and external sources into their Snowflake data warehouse. Unlike custom-built pipelines, Fivetran’s fully managed solution required significantly fewer engineering resources. This freed the team to focus on high-value projects, such as developing AI models and enhancing customer personalization.

The impact goes well beyond cost savings. Fivetran enabled Saks to dramatically reduce data processing times and eliminate manual maintenance, empowering their engineering team to accelerate revenue-driving AI initiatives. The outcome? Faster, more personalized, AI-driven customer experiences that set Saks apart in a competitive market.

“Our ecosystem of Fivetran, Snowflake and dbt allows us to do in two weeks what could take six months to do. We can experiment, try things and scale up quickly to take advantage of opportunities as they come.”
— Mike Hite, CTO at Saks

Read the full Saks case study.

Paylocity saves six figures with 4x productivity lift 

Paylocity, the world’s second-largest payroll and human capital management (HCM) software, faced the challenge of scaling its go-to-market strategy to meet the needs of an expanding customer base. Managing and integrating data across multiple platforms became increasingly complex — especially for a small, resource-constrained data team.

To overcome these hurdles, Paylocity adopted Fivetran to automate data integration. This enabled the team to seamlessly manage data from over 40 sources without adding technical burden. By eliminating nearly all manual data processing, Fivetran freed Paylocity’s lean team to focus on strategic, high-impact tasks. Near real-time access to data empowered them to make critical decisions, such as optimizing budget allocations for funnel conversions and reducing customer acquisition costs.

The shift from manual processes to automated pipelines delivered significant results: a 90% reduction in DIY pipeline development efforts and the ability to scale operations without growing the team. By streamlining data workflows, Paylocity enhanced its ability to quickly respond to market changes, optimize marketing campaigns and deliver highly personalized customer experiences.

Fivetran’s automated data movement platform not only helped Paylocity scale but also delivered substantial cost savings — saving six figures on tools and resources while providing the insights needed to drive customer-focused campaigns. 

"Fivetran has been a core part of allowing us to scale and a force multiplier in our data-driven processes across the organization. We would have spent six figures on other tooling and resources to achieve the same single source of truth for customer data that Fivetran enables."
— Andrew Wahl, Director of Marketing Analytics and Operations at Paylocity

Read the full Paylocity case study.

Dropbox achieves 99% faster insights, boosts engineering productivity 

Dropbox, a global leader in cloud storage, needed to improve the speed and efficiency of its data operations. It was taking weeks to create reports and generate insights — a big speed bump in supporting global collaboration and rapid decision-making. The company faced increasing complexity managing data flows on multiple systems at global scale. It needed a way to automate everything without compromising on quality, speed or team size.

Dropbox chose Fivetran to automate data integration and centralize information from various third-party sources — including Zendesk, Marketo and TikTok — into Snowflake. With Fivetran, the Dropbox data team gained real-time access to data and analytics, reducing data processing times from eight weeks to just 30 minutes. Teams could now access insights on demand, enabling faster, data-driven decisions. Additionally, Fivetran freed the data team to focus on high-value tasks like financial modeling instead of repetitive ETL maintenance.

Dropbox saved the equivalent of three full-time engineering roles, allowing the team to shift its focus from maintenance to innovation. Since adopting Fivetran, Dropbox has onboarded terabytes of data from hundreds of sources, including acquired businesses such as HelloSign, DocSend and FormSwift. This foundational shift has positioned the company for its next major goal: building a unified analytics environment that empowers every line of business to create enterprise-wide insights.

“Fivetran quickly provided tremendous time and cost savings. After our first connector was up and running in 15 minutes, I knew we could completely transform how quickly Dropbox gets to business-critical insights.”
— Lauren Lin, Data Engineering Manager at Dropbox

Read the full Dropbox case study.

Fivetran maximizes efficiency, boosts productivity and drives cost savings

Fivetran delivers substantial business value by enabling companies to efficiently scale their data operations with lean teams. According to IDC, Fivetran customers achieve a three-year ROI of 459% and a payback period of just three months, demonstrating the platform's effectiveness in driving operational efficiency and cost savings.

One standout benefit is the significant boost in productivity. Data engineering teams have reported a 48% productivity gain, saving companies an average of $1.5 million ($89,500 per data source). This increased efficiency allows companies to focus on strategic initiatives instead of lengthy, costly and manual data processes. 

In addition to productivity, Fivetran reduces operational costs by an average of $177,400 annually. Companies like Saks, Paylocity, and Dropbox exemplify the impact — realizing significant cost savings while staying agile and competitive.

Fivetran empowers data teams to do more than keep up — it enables them to transform their organizations with faster insights, streamlined operations and a foundation for strategic innovation.

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