How CSA (Havas Media Network) Regained Client Trust with Out-of-the-Box Data Quality Monitoring

To better understand the challenges CSA (Havas Media Network) faced before adopting Trackingplan, we spoke with Alberto Sánchez, Project Director, and David Rascón, Data & Martech Consultant.

Alberto oversees cross-team processes at CSA, identifying scalable solutions and driving Data Governance initiatives that enable the agency to deliver consistent measurement and improve campaign activation for clients.

David, meanwhile, leads the MarTech area. He orchestrates the entire digital marketing ecosystem for clients and coordinates the team of seven digital consultants who use Trackingplan on a daily basis. From designing what needs to be tracked to configuring the platforms that capture it – ensuring consistency, accuracy, and stability over time – his responsibilities include ensuring all marketing tools are properly implemented, aligned with client business needs, and compliant with GDPR.

An Identified Pain

Manual, Reactive Data Quality Management

Before Trackingplan, CSA struggled with a common challenge: maintaining data quality and consistency across its large client portfolio was a manual and time-consuming task.

“Before Trackingplan, it was impossible to keep track of everything happening across our clients. With the volume we handle, checking every day that everything was running as it should was simply unmanageable.”

With so many accounts, reviewing every setup or running daily audits to catch mistakes on time wasn’t feasible. As a result, the team had no choice but to focus on clients with known implementation issues, leaving many other accounts unmonitored.

This limited visibility reduced their ability to proactively prevent errors, making the process inherently reactive. Many issues only came to light after clients noticed problems, when it was already too late to address them effectively.

As Alberto recalls, it wasn’t uncommon to face situations where a client would make changes to their website or flows, unintentionally breaking tracking, and only discovering the issue when checking results. By the time the client alerted them, media investments had already been made, making it impossible to calculate ROAS or fully understand campaign performance.

These situations were particularly frustrating because – although errors weren’t caused by CSA – the team still had to manage the consequences, explain what had gone wrong, and justify why the problem hadn’t been detected sooner. This reactive and manual approach not only consumed valuable time but also eroded client trust, making it harder to demonstrate reliability and maintain confidence in the reports provided.

Challenges Tracing Historical States During Issue Resolution

Another major pain point was tracing historical tracking states to resolve disputes. As Alberto explains, the team often had to deal with multiple partners contracted by clients, each defending their own implementation.

“If something broke, it was difficult to prove whether the issue was ours or someone else’s — and without historical data, we couldn’t show evidence of how things were before and after a change.”

Without a reliable record, clients were left witnessing disagreements between vendors, when what they really wanted was a solution. This lack of historical evidence made it hard to establish accountability and frequently undermined client confidence in the process.

An Internal Tool Conceptualized Since 2018

Indeed, the pain was so evident that CSA had even conceptualized an internal tool years earlier to tackle it. As they recall, the idea was to develop a solution that could automate validation checks, replacing the highly time-consuming and manual process that Alberto and David had identified in the Tech Analytics team.

The tool’s primary goal was to ensure that the data collected in Google Analytics matched the specifications defined in their SDR and automate that validation, ensuring measurement remained accurate and consistent over time, even if client websites evolved.

“When implementing tracking for clients, it’s often challenging to get the client’s technical team to fully implement the dataLayer according to the provided guidelines and required fields. Yet, ensuring that this implementation remains consistent over time is even more difficult, because clients evolve their sites based on their own business priorities, typically managed by their IT teams – over whom we have practically no visibility or direct communication”.

However, as David and Alberto explain, despite the clear need, development never advanced due to other internal priorities.

“We had the concept on the back burner since around 2018, soon after BigQuery appeared. But as a development project, it was hard to get moving. New clients, urgent tasks, and shifting priorities kept pushing it further down the roadmap.”

A Tool Found at the Right Time

Just as they were about to kick off the development of their internal solution, gathering the team to discuss feasibility, architecture, and functionality, a colleague forwarded them an email about Trackingplan. It immediately caught their attention, as it closely matched the tool they had been envisioning.

Seeing it in action confirmed it: Trackingplan was essentially their concept brought to life. Functionally, it met all the requirements they had imagined, providing an immediate solution to three key needs: (1) ensuring accurate measurement, (2) guaranteeing the data was correct, and (3) maintaining consistency over time.

“We came across exactly the solution we were looking for – and this is rare; it’s not every day you find something so perfectly suited to your problem.”

In this regard, Trackingplan offered instant out-of-the-box monitoring, avoiding months of in-house development just to reach a minimum viable version of the tool they had envisioned. By leveraging an existing solution that perfectly matched their needs, CSA could activate it faster and easier, delivering value immediately without having to build it from scratch.

“Instead of going through the whole internal development process – analyzing, defining, estimating resources and costs, and building a full business plan to get a solution into production – with Trackingplan, everything has been much more immediate. Its ease of use and business model allow us to deliver value within our client project workflow and maintain that ‘icing on the cake.’ I can step in, validate, and then continue the ongoing QA analytics process, ensuring data quality for our clients over time in the most automated way possible.”

When Concept Meets Reality (and Beyond)

To their surprise, Trackingplan went beyond the initial requirements they had envisioned for their in-house tool, even addressing parts of the backlog they had planned for later iterations.

For instance, Trackingplan didn’t just validate Google Analytics tracking, but allowed CSA to extend QA processes to media measurement, including Floodlight tags, platform pixels, activation platforms like Meta and TikTok, server-side tracking integrations, and other partners.

This has also enabled them to give media teams the autonomy to validate and monitor their paid campaign implementations.

“It has also empowered our media team, giving them full autonomy to see what’s implemented, what’s not, and how everything is working.”

Life After Trackingplan

When asked how Trackingplan has changed the way they work, this is what Alberto and David had to share:

Proactive Reaction to Client Issues

With Trackingplan, we can now detect and fix incidents in less than 24 hours.

Before Trackingplan, manual reviews were the only way to keep up. Now, the Daily Digests that receive first thing in the morning, combined with Trackingplan’s automated alerts, allow them to spot potential trends and issues when they happen, without having to constantly check everything or waiting for the client to notice first.

David adds that this has freed up time for him and his team to focus on more strategic, high-impact work instead of repetitive validations.

“Now we can focus on tasks that add real value, rather than just checking that everything that’s supposed to be working is indeed working.”

On the other hand, Alberto emphasizes the peace of mind all of this has brought, allowing them to work with the confidence of knowing that any issue will be detected promptly.

“We’ve avoided that constant stress and the feeling of a sword of Damocles hanging over us, never knowing when an issue might appear.

A Daily Footprint of What Happened

As we’ve seen, without a clear historical record, the team often found themselves dragged into endless debates over accountability when errors occurred.

Now, Trackingplan provides them with a daily footprint of what happened, allowing the team to review the state of the DataLayer days or even weeks later. Alberto highlights this visibility as invaluable for justifying their work and serving as evidence from past validations, as it allows them to map incidents directly to production releases or specific site changes.

“This makes it possible to defend our work, provide clear evidence, and resolve issues proactively, rather than getting caught in endless discussions between providers.”

On top of that, having a complete DataLayer snapshot has proven incredibly useful for David to quickly identify and understand issues without having to navigate multiple flows and edge cases.

“It helps me understand issues or detect incidents without wasting time navigating multiple flows. For example, I can select ten purchases from a specific day of an incident and quickly check whether they had the correct item names or purchase IDs.”

In short, Trackingplan has helped CSA cut through the noise by providing clear, technical evidence of changes, effectively eliminating unproductive debates over responsibility that could otherwise undermine client trust.

Improved Confidence

Building on this, both Alberto and David highlight how Trackingplan has helped them strengthen client relationships by instilling greater trust in their data, analyses, and reports.

“Instead of receiving a complaint, Trackingplan now allows us to get ahead of it and provide a direct solution.”

Being able to proactively notify clients about incidents or anomalies, even when caused by other teams, has positioned CSA as a trusted partner that adds real value by helping clients achieve their goals.

“It’s not the same to push clients forward and help them solve problems as it is to wait for them to raise their hand to complain.”

Instant Setup Discovery for New Clients

Finally, Trackingplan also makes it easy to perform a reverse-engineering audit for new clients. As David explains, there are cases where even the client isn’t fully aware of their current tracking setup. Therefore, this “pre-audit” provides them with a clear snapshot of what the client has been measuring and how, helping the team quickly design a tailored action plan and align measurement with business goals.

"I see it as an instant discovery. Normally, you’d have to dig into the Google Analytics account—which isn’t always straightforward—to uncover potential pain points. Trackingplan lets us identify them quickly, creating opportunities for improvement."

As Alberto adds, with a recent client, Trackingplan helped them pinpoint measurement gaps within their funnel. Without it, identifying where data was missing or incorrectly reported would have been much more difficult, while also serving as a way to strengthen trust and transparency with more mature clients.

Conclusion

By adopting Trackingplan, CSA (Havas Media Network) transformed its data quality management from a manual, reactive process into a fully automated and proactive operation. What began as an internal idea years ago became a reality overnight, without the need for months of in-house development.

Today, CSA’s Tech Analytics team works with the confidence that every implementation is consistently monitored, every anomaly is caught before it escalates, and every client can rely on their data to make informed decisions. Trackingplan not only allowed CSA to detect incidents in time and trace historical changes with precision, but also helped them rebuild and strengthen client trust through transparency and reliability.

In Alberto and David’s words, Trackingplan has become more than a QA tool — it’s a strategic ally that enables CSA to deliver data excellence at scale, anticipate problems before clients do, and maintain the standard of trust that defines the agency’s value.

About the Agency

CSA is the global technology, data, and analytics consultancy arm of Havas Media Network — one of the world’s largest communications networks, with over 23,000 professionals across 100+ markets.

With a presence in 20+ locations and a team of 400+ experts, CSA combines the knowledge of data scientists, AI and machine learning specialists, behavioral economists, digital technologists, and data strategists. Together, they offer end-to-end data and technology solutions rooted in meaningful business growth, helping organizations thrive through a customer-centric and results-driven approach to data analysis, precise implementation, ongoing optimization, impactful results, and sustainable success.

Operating across multiple clients and projects, CSA delivers end-to-end MarTech, analytics, and consulting services that span the entire analytics lifecycle — from defining and implementing data layers to configuring analytics platforms, auditing setups, and maintaining stable, standardized measurement frameworks.

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For agencies managing complex analytics setups, CSA’s experience with Trackingplan demonstrates how out-of-the-box data quality monitoring can help regain client trust, simplify workflows, and avoid months of in-house development, all while ensuring a higher standard of accuracy and reliability in every project.