How Klaviyo Scaled Self-Serve Analytics with Snowflake and Coefficient

The Challenge: A Single Source of Truth That Nobody Could Access

Klaviyo made the right bet on Snowflake. Their data team built a governed, centralized warehouse – the kind of single source of truth that every scaling company aspires to.

But there was a problem: the business couldn’t reach it.

Across the organization, data-hungry teams in FP&A, Sales, and Product needed answers from Snowflake daily. They couldn’t write SQL. They didn’t have direct warehouse access. So they did what business users everywhere do – they filed a ticket and waited. Or worse, they exported a CSV and built a static spreadsheet that was stale before the meeting started.

• The data team became the bottleneck. Ad-hoc requests consumed the BI team’s bandwidth, pulling engineers away from building infrastructure to pull simple lists.
• Building in Tableau was slow. Every metric had to be individually constructed in the BI tool – calculating something like gross churn rate meant building the entire calculation from scratch, then repeating that process for every new metric.
• Shadow IT flourished. Static CSV exports proliferated – ungoverned copies of Snowflake data living in disconnected spreadsheets, creating version conflicts and security risk.

The Solution: Bridging Snowflake to the Spreadsheets Where Work Happens

Klaviyo’s reporting team recognized something important: the business wasn’t going to abandon spreadsheets. Google Sheets is where financial models get built, where forecasts get debated, where board decks come together. And critically, working in Google Sheets was significantly faster than building equivalent reports in Tableau.

The reason is straightforward: in a BI tool like Tableau, every metric needs to be individually constructed. In Google Sheets, you reference a cell, write a formula, and drag it across – and the report is done. Coefficient made that workflow live by connecting Snowflake directly to the spreadsheets where Klaviyo’s business teams already worked.

Instead of exporting static CSVs, teams now pull live, governed data from Snowflake directly into Google Sheets – with the same schema-level permissions and security that Snowflake enforces at the warehouse layer.

Key Capabilities Deployed

• Live Snowflake connectivity: Business users access warehouse data directly in Google Sheets – no SQL required, no tickets needed
• Automated refresh scheduling: Reports update automatically, ensuring stakeholders always see current data from Snowflake
• Schema-level governance: Snowflake’s permission model is preserved as access expands across the organization
• Multi-source data blending: Teams combine live Snowflake data with feeds from Tableau and Salesforce in a single spreadsheet
• Write-back capability: Users push updates back to Snowflake, enabling two-way workflows for operations teams

The Results: Snowflake’s ROI, Multiplied

One Month of Manual Work Eliminated

Before Coefficient, Klaviyo’s teams spent significant time on manual data operations – exporting CSVs, copying data between systems, and reconciling versions. With live Snowflake data flowing directly into their spreadsheets, Klaviyo reclaimed approximately one month of capacity.

Reports Built 4x Faster Than Tableau

What previously took a month to build in Tableau now takes a week in Google Sheets powered by Coefficient. Teams reference cells, write formulas, and drag calculations across columns – a workflow that’s fundamentally faster for the kind of operational reporting Klaviyo’s business teams need.

Self-Serve Analytics at Scale

The adoption curve was dramatic. What started with the reporting team quickly spread across FP&A, Sales, and Product in what Klaviyo described as a “hockey stick curve.” Over 100 business users across the organization now access Snowflake data through Coefficient – with the Product team even creating internal wikis and training materials to onboard teammates.

Deeper Snowflake Adoption Across the Organization

By meeting business users in their spreadsheets, Coefficient actually drove deeper Snowflake adoption. Instead of working with stale exports, every spreadsheet now maintains a live connection to Snowflake. The single source of truth stays intact – and more people use it.

Shadow IT Eliminated

Static CSV exports – the ungoverned “shadow IT” that plagues every data team – were replaced by live, governed connections. Every spreadsheet report pulls directly from Snowflake, ensuring data integrity and security.

Coefficient has also been instrumental for:

• Executive Board Materials. Saves approximately one week per quarter by pulling live Snowflake data directly into board deck spreadsheets.
• Product Analytics. Product team monitors feature performance with live warehouse data – no engineering support needed.
• Data Audits & Reconciliation. Near-real-time detection of data inconsistencies between systems, powered by live Snowflake queries.
• Blended Forecasting. Finance team blends live Snowflake actuals with forward-looking forecasts in a single sheet.