Case Study: Neue Zürcher Zeitung achieves faster, data-driven insights and self-service analytics with Tableau Software

Data transparency and responsiveness at Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), a respected Swiss publisher since 1780, faced the challenge of turning growing digital data into fast, actionable insights. The analytics team had been limited by an Excel-based reporting approach and ad-hoc analysis, which slowed response to market opportunities and cross-departmental needs; in October 2014 they began a migration to a new analytics platform to enable faster, self-service BI for about 35 users across marketing and product teams.

NZZ built a data-warehouse foundation and adopted Tableau, where Tableau Desktop’s native connectors and fast exploration let analysts work effectively after one day of introduction and avoid full ETL for initial validation. The solution enabled automated daily insights from diverse sources (SQL Server, Adobe Analytics, S3, Spark, etc.), revealed the importance of ePaper download metrics, improved editorial optimization and campaign analysis, and delivered quicker detection of irregularities—earning praise for its flexibility, simplicity, and performance.

Neue Zurcher Zeitung

Markus Barmettler

Head of Analytics and Market Research