You’re not alone - Here’s what every business struggles with (and how we fix it)

The heart of The Refinery is our fantastic customers – they are the reason we do what we do. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that understanding their needs, expectations, and behaviours is key to building lasting relationships and driving success for both them and us. They inform our roadmap; we inform their business strategy. 

I gravitated towards the Customer Success team in early 2024 and took a more formal role in CS later in the year; it didn’t take long to uncover that our customer preferences are constantly evolving and once we get under the hood of their data, there really is so much value we can add and no limit in terms of insight.

I have the privilege of working across all our clients, giving me a unique perspective on the challenges they face. Despite differences in industry or size, many share the same frustrations—whether it’s data silos, customer engagement struggles, or the need for more personalised experiences. Seeing these common pain points firsthand allows me to understand what truly matters and how businesses can address them effectively, in order to help them drive meaningful change through data led decisions. In this blog I share some of the common themes we see again and again, in both customer success meetings and our sales conversations.

So, what keeps cropping up?

“Our data is a mess; we need a single source of truth”

Let’s start with the obvious, the bedrock of The Data Refinery - solving incompatible data sources. Every single Refinery customer has come to us with the same core problem: data scattered across multiple platforms, systems and spreadsheets, making it nearly impossible to gain a unified, accurate view of their business performance.

For many, this previously meant wasting countless hours manually pulling reports from different tools like Google Analytics, CRM systems, ERP platforms, and marketing dashboards—only to find inconsistencies, missing data and conflicting figures. This lack of a centralised data source has led to delayed decision-making, inefficiencies and, in some cases, misguided business strategies based on incomplete or outdated information.

By using The Data Refinery they now have a fully integrated single source of truth, unifying data for accurate reporting and seamless access across teams.

“We just don’t have the resource right now”

Whether it be time, expertise or infrastructure. The manual load of reporting, analytics and decision making often meant that with most clients, by the time a decision was made – it was already out of date. This manual process was prone to errors and delays, reducing the team's ability to react quickly to market trends and optimise performance. Our clients all needed a solution that would give them time back, give them resources back and most importantly, give them the data they needed quickly, to make decisions quick enough to have a real impact.

“We need fast insight”

As an extension to the above, most of our customers need regular and speedy access to their data to track product performance and sales within the day. Our entry level package allows for data syncs every 24 hours as a minimum, so when our customers login on a morning, they can see full insight of the previous day. For some clients, their package allows for up to one hour sync times – gaining actionable insight on performance of the previous hour!  

“We need segmentation tailored to our business model”

Many of our customers had struggled with rigid, predefined segmentation models that failed to capture the unique behaviours and needs of their customers. Traditional segmentation methods often rely on broad categories, such as demographics or basic purchase history, which don’t provide the depth needed for truly personalised marketing and engagement.

For example, retailers and eCommerce brands often want to segment customers based on factors like lifetime value, product affinities, engagement levels, or even predictive behaviours, but their existing tools don’t support this level of granularity. 

By implementing custom-built segmentation through TheRefinery, our customers have moved beyond generic audience groups, creating hyper-targeted strategies that drive real impact. The best part? Most of this bespoke work falls within our package’s allocated monthly data science time—meaning tailored solutions at no extra cost.

“We need something that pushes audiences out to our marketing platform for activation”

Many of our customers struggled with identifying high-value customer segments and seamlessly pushing those audiences into marketing platforms for activation. Traditional methods often require manual data extraction, complex queries, or third-party integrations, slowing down campaign execution and reducing efficiency.

With The Data Refinery, our customers can effortlessly identify trends, build highly targeted customer audiences, and activate them across marketing platforms in just a few clicks. They can now react faster to opportunities, ensuring their campaigns reach the right people at the right time—maximising engagement and ROI with minimal effort.

One of our retail customers used our Audience Builder to quickly identify high-value customers who had purchased from a specific product category in the past six months. Within minutes, they pushed this audience to their Meta and Google Ads accounts, launching a retargeting campaign that saw a significant uplift in conversion rates—all without any additional manual effort.

“We don’t have the Budget”

A bit of an elephant in the room here, but let’s keep it real – we all know that the majority of data solutions that will actually have an impact on your business, don’t come cheap. Our clients needed a solution that was flexible enough to meet their bespoke requirements but not built from the ground up for them alone. Coming in at a mere fraction of the price of anin house build or consultancy, we are (and proud to say) able to offer everything they need, fully managed and supported, for an extremely competitive price.

A Summary of Success

We’re always striving for the next big win for our customers, no result is too small for us to shout about. Of the changes we have made, here are some of my favourites:

- We freed up 90% of one of our client’s time, by removing manual efforts

- A customer who spent 2 years trying to analyse cross-brand purchase frequency can now do it in minutes.‍

- 25%+ increase in audience reach for a client, thanks to improved opt ins.

- We placed one customer 12-18 months ahead in strategic planning with our data insights

- 20 hours of manual work eliminated per week, saving over 43 days per year!

We love making a real, lasting impact in the organisations we work with. Helping businesses unlock the full potential of their data is what drives us, and we’re passionate about creating meaningful change. If you’re looking to transform the way your company uses data, we’d love to help.

If you made it this far – firstly -thank you for sticking around - but more importantly, if any of the common themes we face resonated with you, book in a quick call with us and we can discuss options for you and your data.

Let’s make your next big win happen together.