How ForeFlight Saved $150K Yearly by Clearing Data Clutter

Insight/Action/Outcome: Data governance issues and a lack of visibility into event data tracking had aviation software company ForeFlight struggling to make data-driven decisions and spending extra on costly overage charges. With Amplitude, they cleared their data clutter by 67% and set up self-serve data access across their organization, saving $150,000 annually and empowering teams to better understand and serve their users.

As a commercial pilot with an instrument rating, when I get in the cockpit, I want the perfect amount of info. Not so much that it becomes overwhelming, but just enough to improve situational awareness and safety while I'm in the air.

As it turns out, that’s the same perspective I need as Senior Analytics Product Manager at ForeFlight. Our software delivers personal aviators an all-in-one solution for flight planning, and I enable the data governance and tools my colleagues need for uncovering the right information, right when they need it, to arrive at more data-driven decisions.

When I arrived at ForeFlight two years ago, we knew we had a great product—I rely on it myself! But we had trouble understanding how pilots engaged with specific features, and therefore how to make our product even better. We didn’t lack the data to get those insights, though—we actually had the opposite problem.

Lots of data, but flying in the dark

Sometime before I arrived, product teams got the message that they should track analytics events for each feature. ForeFlight used Twilio Segment as its customer data platform (CDP), so the data was extensive. The trouble was, with each new feature or iteration, PMs weren’t able to look at the pre-existing events they could repurpose. Instead, they repeatedly created dozens of new events.

Duplication of events over the years resulted in us trying to store, process, and visualize (and sometimes forget about) too much data. Some events triggered at least eight times per user action or even more. And because making sense of our data required specialist knowledge, like knowing where data lived in our warehouse and proficiency in SQL and Tableau, the underlying data governance problem wasn’t getting resolved, so our data just kept getting harder and harder to use.

Data became fragmented from the business KPIs that should have guided our efforts. PMs skipped querying the BI data engineering team for product questions and launched new functionalities primarily based on anecdotal understanding of how pilots actually used the app. In addition, we started getting hit with overage charges for going over our API call limit.

Not only did I need to improve our relationship with data so teams could turn it into meaningful insights and action—I also needed a way to show that my data team, which is typically viewed as a cost center, could be good stewards of our existing resources.

Building the structure and preparing for takeoff

I had experience working with some of the Amplitude team, so Amplitude Analytics had always been on my radar. In this case, its data governance capabilities paired with its self-serve analytics seemed like exactly the thing to help dig us out of our data debt and show teams the power of analytics.

We compared it to some tangentially related options, such as Datadog, but the biggest comparison for us was build vs. buy. Ultimately, a hands-on POC that allowed us to pump data into Amplitude and try it out firsthand is what moved the needle for us. Experiencing self-service analytics hands-on and seeing the quick time to value swayed people in our engineering-heavy organization.

We were also able to set up our analytics ecosystem to take advantage of our existing Segment CDP. We send the code to Segment, and Segment sends that data to Amplitude.

My objective with Amplitude was to translate data into insights, and insights into product strategy. Once we had the basics set up, we started seeing results almost immediately.

Better governance saves $150k per year

To translate our data into insights, I needed to improve our data governance first. With Amplitude, we gained the visibility we needed to identify duplicated events, inconsistent naming conventions, and incorrectly triggering actions—and clean house.

Clearing the data clutter resulted in a 67% reduction in events, 44% reduction in event properties, and 56% fewer API calls to Segment, which is expected to translate to $150,000 in annual savings. More importantly, the shift allows more space for better event tracking and the ability to track more products and features.

Going forward, Amplitude has also given us the tools to maintain our gains. Teams continue to push out new features all the time, but it’s now much easier to make sure those features are instrumented correctly. We can review our existing events and see if any can be repurposed, or even if there are old events that can be retired.

Self-serve analytics clears up visibility

Translating insights into product strategy followed naturally.

One of the first things I did with our improved event design was build an Engagement Matrix chart showing our most- and least-used features. Viewed Maps is essentially our home page, and when I shared the journey map that showed the most common user journey after leaving the home page, the engineering team used it to reprioritize some of their initiatives.

Seeing a better picture of how pilots use our products has shifted our culture to being more data-informed. No longer relying on assumptions, anecdotes, or that one squeaky-wheel customer, we now make decisions based on objective information. And teams understand the connection between collecting data and achieving key business outcomes.

It also helps that teams can access data on their own. Previously, understanding user behavior required navigating complex databases and generating one-off visualizations. Now, product managers can jump into Amplitude to quickly answer their own questions. When someone from design asked me a question recently, we popped into Amplitude and had an answer in under five minutes.

Moving fast and with conviction is especially important for a small organization learning to become a bigger one like ForeFlight. Amplitude has made that possible.

Delivering precision and awareness

Over my career, I’ve led enterprise data teams and implemented a lot of tech platforms. Not only was Amplitude one of the easiest to implement, but their team was also among the easiest to work with. Their Professional Services team actively guides me in product analytics, which is a significant help because I'm the pilot in command of product analytics at ForeFlight. They are responsive and a great sounding board.

A strategic partner who does what they say they’re going to do and is truly engaged in that relationship is worth their weight in gold.

Since implementing Amplitude for our core mobile product, we have expanded our use to support six products and integrate data from various additional sources. We’re now asking more mature questions than we had the framework to answer before, and we’re able to understand user behavior that could indicate churn risk, upselling opportunities, and downselling trends.

Amplitude’s self-serve capabilities have transformed our approach by enabling users across ForeFlight to navigate the complexities of user engagement with the same precision and awareness we offer pilots. Now that we better understand the pilots we serve, we can ensure every feature helps users soar to new heights of situational awareness and flight safety.