Zalando Case Study
Case Study
Empowering data-driven decision-making with faster insights and enhanced access
Checkatrade modernized its data platform, cutting data processing time by 60% and enabling 35% of employees to access insights on their own. With Starburst, the company streamlined its data architecture, improved operational efficiency, and expanded real-time analytics.
60%
faster data processing
35%
of employees self-serve insights
100 TB
data processed daily
Region
EMEA
Industry
software
Environment
cloud
Solution
galaxy
Employees
250-500
George Karapalidis
Director of Data
Checkatrade
“Starburst became the core of our data ecosystem, bringing together disparate data sources and enabling real-time access across the business. With it, we improved by 60% and empowered 35% of employees to become data-driven.”
About
Checkatrade, the UK’s leading platform for home improvement, has connected consumers with trusted tradespeople for over 25 years. With a network of over 50,000 vetted trade businesses, Checkatrade facilitates more than three million jobs and £7 billion of business for UK Small and Medium-sized Enterprises annually.
Now evolving from its traditional background as a directory into a technology-driven marketplace, Checkatrade is developing a more seamless experience for consumers and tradespeople, building upon its long-standing commitment to high-quality trades. Data volumes have expanded rapidly, creating an opportunity to continue scaling efficiently and ensure data-driven decision-making. Checkatrade required a modernized data platform to process 100TB of data daily, while providing real-time and fast access to insights across teams.
Challenge
- Checkatrade’s on-premises legacy database could no longer keep pace with growing data demands, resulting in slow data processing (slow query execution) and limited real-time insights.
- The company initially adopted a managed Presto service, but limitations around feature updates and scalability prompted a search for a more modern, flexible solution.
- Data access was limited, with only 20 team members in the data team able to query data.
- Checkatrade required a cost-effective, scalable solution that could support real-time analytics, self-service BI, and seamless cross-cloud querying.
Solution
To overcome these challenges, Checkatrade implemented Starburst Galaxy, a cloud-based data platform that powers its lakehouse architecture — transforming how data is accessed, processed, and managed across the company.
- Migrated to Starburst Galaxy, leveraging Trino and Apache Iceberg to unify over 100 data sources across AWS and Google Cloud
- Integrated with existing tools like Power BI and dbt to enable widespread data access
- Strengthened data governance with role-based access control (RBAC) and policy-based data masking
- Enabled flexible, real-time data access for engineers, analysts, and business teams through a federated architecture
Results
With Starburst, Checkatrade successfully modernized its data architecture, unlocking new efficiencies and expanding data access across the organization:
- 60% faster data processing: Batch pipelines that once took 6 hours now run in 1.5 hours.
- Company-wide data access: 35% of Checkatrade’s employees now have direct access to data insights, reducing dependence on the data team.
- Real-time & near-real-time analytics: Starburst enabled real-time troubleshooting for engineers and faster reporting for business teams.
- Seamless data federation: The ability to query across PostgreSQL, Firebase, and other sources without duplicating data.
