How Zencargo Adopted Self-Service BI in Just 3 Months

The Challenge: Data Democratization

Zencargo’s primary challenge was enabling non-technical business users to access and interact with data independently, without relying on the data engineering team. Their previous BI tool, Looker, required users to submit tickets or depend on analysts for even basic data exploration.

This created bottlenecks, slowed decision-making, and prevented teams from quickly pulling together the insights they required. Zencargo needed a self-service analytics solution that would allow business users to go beyond static dashboards, ask ad hoc questions, and self-serve analytics in real time.

The core challenges included:

• Limited Data Accessibility: Business teams struggled to interact with data without technical support, creating dependencies on the data team for even basic exploratory questions.
• Slow Decision-Making: Many exploratory questions either went unasked due to routing requirements through the data team, or took days to resolve, slowing down critical business decisions.
• Resource Allocation Issues: The data team allocated team resources to traditional analyst roles, manually producing insights rather than focusing on strategic data product management and engineering.

As Zencargo focused on elevating customer experience, they needed a Looker alternative that would democratize access to analytics across the business while maintaining data quality and trust.

The Self-Service BI Solution

Zencargo chose ThoughtSpot due to its emphasis on self-service BI and ease of use. ThoughtSpot outperformed legacy BI tools like Looker by allowing business users to ask questions and get answers without technical support.

This aligned with Zencargo’s broader AI-driven strategy to automate routine tasks and empower their teams to focus on higher-value activities.

• Data Democratization: ThoughtSpot's ability to cater to business users who want to "ask a question and get an answer" without needing SQL knowledge or technical expertise, making insights accessible to everyone.
• Real-Time Exploration: The search functionality and drill-anywhere capabilities allowed teams to ask second, third, and fourth-level questions on the fly without pre-defining all possible data exploration paths.
• Self-Service Analytics: The platform enabled business teams to work more independently, provided they had clear explanations of data structure and metric definitions, reducing dependencies on the data team for routine analytics requests.

As a company, AI is our main goal. Thoughtspot allows us to free up humans to focus on value and insights rather than on repeated tasks.

Mariia VailHead of DataZencargo

The platform’s natural language search and intuitive interface made it possible for users to explore data independently, freeing up the data team to focus on value-added work and data quality rather than repetitive reporting tasks.

The Impact of Self-Service Analytics

Zencargo completed its migration from Looker to ThoughtSpot in just three months, followed by another three months focused on user education. Having a robust, established data infrastructure in BigQuery made the education and adoption process more efficient as they did not have to take the step of cleaning up the data or enforcing new guidelines for data hygiene.

Key outcomes include:

• 90% of business users actively use ThoughtSpot , including teams across finance, product, and sales.
• No dedicated analysts required: The data team no longer builds or maintains dashboards, focusing instead on high-value strategic work.
• Custom, supply chain-specific reporting delivered at scale—a flexibility not possible with previous tools.
• Business reviews are done live in-platform , building customer trust and helping teams resolve data issues in real time.

The Customer Success team also leverages ThoughtSpot to monitor financial performance, customer health metrics, and operational KPIs, allowing account managers to hold themselves accountable, measure their own performance, and rapidly calculate commissions.

ThoughtSpot offers a level of specificity and flexibility to present customer data that we weren’t previously able to offer at pace.

Kyle IngermanVice President, Customer SuccessZencargo

ThoughtSpot has enabled teams to quickly identify data quality and workflow gaps through daily checks of standardized dashboards, fostering a culture of continuous data quality improvement and user accountability.

Looking Ahead

Zencargo plans to expand analytics capabilities, improve data quality, and make insights more accessible—aiming to share internal best practices with customers. By investing in reusable data assets and supporting its AI-driven strategy, the company is laying the groundwork for even broader impact.

Through ThoughtSpot, Zencargo has successfully transformed from a support-focused to a data-driven organization where analytics capabilities serve as a competitive advantage, supporting their mission to create smarter global trade.