Bakery Franchise

Posted by Encora on Aug 30, 2023 3:35:06 PM
Amid the global pandemic, the food industry experienced a surge in direct-to-consumer (D2C) buying trends...

Topics: Product Engineering & Development, Quality Engineering, Product management, Cloud Services, Snowflake, DevSecOps, Retail & CPG, Data & Analytics

Industry Context

Amid the global pandemic, the food industry experienced a surge in direct-to-consumer (D2C) buying trends. This shift towards digital commerce affected the baking sector, prompting bakeries to explore online avenues and leverage data analytics for insights into customer preferences, efficient inventory management, and improved production processes. The competitive nature of the market underscores the need for baking businesses to formulate robust strategies for bolstering digital commerce to differentiate themselves and maintain a competitive edge. 

The project revolves around a successful bakery franchise with 500+ locations across the United States and Canada. Renowned for its remarkable cakes that leave a lasting impression in terms of both appearance and taste, the franchise has embraced the challenge of adapting to evolving consumer preferences and market dynamics. 

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Client Challenge

The client was facing an outdated data infrastructure that struggled to meet the escalating needs of their diverse customer base. Legacy systems and outdated data practices posed a significant obstacle, impairing the efficient collection, processing, and analysis of vital data. The presence of incomplete and unreliable information further impeded their capacity to make well-informed business decisions, endangering both their competitive stance and future growth prospects. 

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Approach

  • Cloud Services: Alleviated the current hardware burden and ensured a steady stream of bandwidth to facilitate smooth real-time transmission and sharing of extensive data volumes.
  • Product Engineering & Development: Migrated analytics capabilities to a modern framework, incorporating operational data to fuel near real-time analysis.
  •  DevSecOps: Overhauled data pipeline processes for cloud compatibility, while phasing out on-premises servers
  • Data Modernization & Engineering: Leveraging Snowflake's robust infrastructure, our data science and engineering expertise empowered the client to unleash their data's full potential, facilitating informed decision-making and strategic innovations
  • Quality Engineering: Enforced contemporary quality engineering practices on Snowflake to establish a dependable and efficient data ecosystem for accurate and consistent insights
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Why Snowflake?

  • Data Warehousing and Analytics in One Platform: Snowflake seamlessly merges data warehousing and analytics functionalities within a single platform. This cohesive integration empowers you to store, process, and analyze data without the complexities of data transfers between disparate systems. 
  • Scalability: presents an automatic and virtually limitless scalability. From modest datasets to extensive data warehouses, Snowflake adeptly manages a diverse spectrum of data workloads, all without necessitating manual infrastructure adjustments. 
  • Performance: Harnessing an innovative architecture tailored for cloud data processing, Snowflake showcases heightened query performance and minimized query latency, ensuring swift and efficient data retrieval. 
  • User-Friendly Interface: Snowflake's SQL-based interface resonates with numerous data professionals, facilitating a smooth learning curve and enabling teams to leverage their existing skill sets. 
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Snowflake Solution

Beginning with an assessment of the client's existing state, Encora gained a deep understanding of their data landscape, identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement. Subsequently, a strategic roadmap for data modernization was meticulously recommended, tailored to address the client's specific needs and goals.  

To ensure the seamless execution of this roadmap, Encora supported the client's team with highly skilled engineers, fostering a collaborative environment that blended domain expertise with technological expertise. The project also entailed initiating a distinct engagement specifically geared towards fulfilling the client's demands for business intelligence and analytics. 

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Results

  • Achieved a remarkable 20% reduction in costs through the implementation of Snowflake, surpassing the expenses of the client's prior data analytics system.
  • Transformed data accessibility and timeliness, slashing the window for data availability to business users from a former 3–5-day span to an impressive 24 hours or less, all achieved through meticulously scheduled data loads.
NCKS  Results (2)
NCKS -20% Cost Reduction

Cost Reduction

NCKS +80%

Data Availability Improvement