Founded in 1902, Lamar Advertising Company is one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in North America, with displays across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Lamar offers advertisers a variety of billboard interstate logo and transit advertising formats –  including the largest network of digital billboards – to help both local businesses and national brands reach broad audiences every day.

The challenge

Lamar Advertising had an aging Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse that started to experience performance, data integrity and reliability issues. Additionally, Lamar was finding its data warehouse difficult to scale to address the company’s evolving needs and difficult to document and manage.

The solution

Lamar Advertising used WhereScape® automation software to re-engineer its SQL Server data warehouse and build a series of target data marts, extracts, and executive dashboards that incorporated the massive amounts of big data being generated by its digital billboards. The new data delivery solution also leveraged Tableau’s presentation and analytical layer for reporting and analysis.

The results

• A two-person team developed a dozen point solutions in just months to address specific business needs.
• The company now processes Lamar Digital Display data in 1.5 hours, down from 8 hours.
• IT can provide much better reporting and analytics to its stakeholders, helping management to better identify new business opportunities.