How Did Tonal Build Analytics Infrastructure the Entire Organization Trusts?
A premium hardware + subscription business needed bulletproof analytics from day one—proving that data trust starts with business alignment, not tool selection.
Quick Facts
Key Takeaways
Starting with business alignment (shared definitions, agreed KPIs) is more important than tool selection
Data trust is earned through consistent accuracy over time—expect 4-6 months for org-wide adoption
Using an agency provides team depth and expertise that's hard to replicate with a single hire
Tonal is an intelligent strength training system that delivers full-body workouts from a wall-mounted digital touch screen. Combining premium hardware with ongoing subscriptions, Tonal operates with longer sales cycles and considerably more customer touchpoints than typical consumer products.
From day one, they knew data would be critical.
Building Data Infrastructure Right the First Time
The Business Problem
Tonal needed robust data infrastructure to capture shopper behaviors and report on sales and marketing funnels from first touch through purchase and beyond. But building this required expertise they couldn't hire in a single employee.
What Were the Concerns?
Beyond the technical challenge, Tonal didn't want a single team member holding all the keys to company performance data. That concentration of knowledge was too risky.
Business Alignment First, Then Infrastructure
We embedded with Tonal to build their data foundation from the ground up—but we started with people and processes, not tools.
Business Alignment
We started with our six-step process to align internal teams on key business questions and identify the data needed to answer them. This created a shared vocabulary for analytics across the organization.
Infrastructure Build
We designed and built data infrastructure calibrated for Tonal's specific business model: premium products, long consideration cycles, hardware + subscription monetization.
Data Validation
We spent considerable time auditing data outputs and reports for accuracy. For the organization to trust and rally around the data, every report had to be bulletproof.
Nimble Reporting
Both teams insisted that reporting systems be nimble enough that data could be pulled on-demand and easily shared—with leadership, with the board, with any team that needed it.
Team Building Support
As we built the infrastructure, Tonal began hiring their own internal data team. We provided failover and support as that team ramped up.
Organization-Wide Data Trust Established
The exercises we put Tonal through before building infrastructure raised the bar around data intelligence across the organization. Teams now communicate using shared definitions. Leadership trusts the dashboards. The board gets accurate numbers.
What Tonal Gained
"While hiring GrowthBench costs less than hiring a dedicated employee, the real benefit is in having direct access to a team of experts. Their in-depth experience has helped us develop our critical data and analytics infrastructure correctly the first time. And now that we're all setup they act as a failover should something break or our internal team hit a snag."
