Modern Data Platform Transforms Decision Making for Retail & Financial Services Organization

A large, publicly traded retail and financial services company operating across the United States and Latin America. The organization’s operations hinge on unique retail dynamics, such as second-hand goods with individual identifiers, localized inventory management, and a “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS) ecommerce model.

Due to its complex retail model, the client needs to manage and understand stock movement, sales and purchasing across millions of second-hand stock-keeping units (SKUs). The nature of the product inventory means that holding data on specifics, such as product condition, current value (particularly for the gold inventory), and compliance records (for firearms) is a critical element of business operations.

As the client’s business has evolved over the years, its legacy IT systems have become increasingly complex, costly and fragmented. The storage, management, and use of data was a particular area of concern. The legacy data platform was costly, outdated, and poorly documented, making it incompatible with the organization’s strategic move to a modern microservices architecture.

As part of a larger digital transformation initiative, the organization wanted to modernize its database in order to enhance its agility, scalability and efficiency. It also wanted to enable data-driven decision making across its operations to support well-informed strategic planning and innovation.

Ensono had been working closely with this organization for several years delivering targeted technical solutions in Azure production environments. Based on the success of this relationship, it engaged Ensono to develop a modern, scalable data platform, to run in parallel with a phased architecture modernization project that was starting to move the business to a microservices-based solution. The new data platform and approach needed to seamlessly align with both existing and future architectures and be capable of meeting the client’s current and future operational needs.

Key steps in the journey were.

• Discovery and assessment: Ensono conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the client’s existing systems, uncovering inefficiencies such as excessive reliance on third-party reporting and inadequate documentation. Vital business analysis was also carried out in this phase which went on to inform the data architecture.
• Building the new platform: Creating a new data platform from the ground up.

This Microsoft platform utilized Databricks, applying a medallion architecture. This data design pattern is used to logically organize data and progressively improve its structure and quality as it flows through each layer. The Bronze layer consumes and stores all events (from linked systems such as ShopifyPlus and microservices), the silver layer builds the logic, and the Gold, or end-user, layer delivers reports specific to the client’s needs, using calculations modelled specifically to reflect the way the business operates.

The transition to the new platform was carefully planned and executed to maintain continuity between the old and new systems, avoiding disruption to operations. Throughout the project, Ensono emphasized transparency and proactive communication, working closely with the client’s internal teams to align technical execution with business objectives.

The new modern architecture approach not only supports microservices but also lays the groundwork for future capabilities such as AI and advanced analytics. This gives the client the flexibility to ask any question of its data.

The client now has a scalable, AI-ready data platform, capable of supporting future innovations such as predictive analytics. Automated deployment, comprehensive test automation and regression tooling ensures that changes can be deployed quickly and securely. Other benefits include:

• Improved governance and documentation: Ensono introduced improved ways of working and best practices in technical development, including Architectural Decision Records (ADRs).The Ensono delivery team reduced the time it took to gain agreement on architectural direction from weeks to days. The number of bespoke reports generated was reduced from around 150 to 50 by eliminating duplicates and implementing a process for users to validate existing core reports.
• Enhanced reliability and scalability: The new data platform uses messaging to ensure it is de-coupled from MSV and processes incrementally throughout the day, in contrast to the current short-window processing. This allows the client to seamlessly integrate new business acquisitions and scale operations across existing and new geographies. This element of the engagement was about building a scalable platform which would enable the client to facilitate their growth ambitions for the foreseeable future, whilst maintaining the quality of service and user experience that their customers expect.
• Faster, more accurate decision-making: The new platform provides stakeholders with timely, actionable insights, enabling data-driven decisions at both operational and strategic levels. Self-service reporting means that business leaders can make better, faster business decisions without having to go to third parties to generate the reports they need. Ensono improved the accuracy of real-time data, so that information could be viewed with an accuracy of hours rather than days or weeks.
• Cost savings: By decommissioning legacy systems and optimizing reporting processes, the client has reduced unnecessary expenditure and improved resource allocation.
• A foundation for further improvements: Better-structured, managed and understood data is an enabler for the development of a more ‘fit for purpose’ eCommerce platform to reflect the unique nature of this business. There is now increased potential to migrate to a solution better suited to its unique retail model while maintaining fidelity of data, with less friction and a lower risk of disruption to operations.