CloverDX > Case Studies > Leading e-commerce site puts data at the center of success

Leading e-commerce site puts data at the center of success

Product

CloverDX
Vertica-based data warehouse

Tech Stack

SQL
Data Integration
Data Warehouse

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Analytics & Modeling - Data-as-a-Service

Applicable Industries

E-Commerce

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Supply Chain Visibility
Inventory Management

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

The customer is a leading e-commerce company that has experienced rapid growth since its inception. The company is technology-first and has always placed operational data at the forefront of its expansion. However, they were struggling to scale their manual data integration operation to keep up with their success. They were looking for a better way to harness their data to continue to build better business insights. The company confirmed their position as a true innovator in data-driven business when they were acquired in one of the largest ever ecommerce deals.

The Challenge

The online retailer had achieved rapid growth in just a few years since being founded. Having built the business as very much a technology-first enterprise, they were looking for a data solution to better help all areas of the organization, and one that could scale with and support the company’s expansion. The decision to build a data warehouse was made to provide rapid access to the value held within their operational data. By deploying a flexible data lake they had direct access to source systems via a replicated database. One of the key requirements from the IT team was to handle changes in the business more easily, and to be able to get quick answers to business questions from the data. While a traditional data warehouse is built to answer specific questions, the ability to access source data meant that the company could be much more flexible and responsive in its approach, and get the valuable insights they needed, fast.

The Solution

The company built a data warehouse with the help of CloverDX, which enabled them to rapidly access the value held in their data. The solution was flexible enough to adapt to changing business requirements, and use data insights to continually optimize every aspect of their business. To gradually build the reporting database, the company opted for a Vertica-based data warehouse. They looked for a data integration tool, knowing that the entire data warehouse solution depended on getting this right. After shortlisting a number of providers for the task of feeding the data warehouse with the right data in the right format, the business ultimately decided on CloverDX as the best offering in terms of price, performance, capability and the level of support offered by the company.

Operational Impact

The benefits of the data warehouse weren’t only felt by the IT team. Once the data warehouse was up and running, it led to better interaction between the wider business and IT.
Each department has people who can self-serve their data needs by taking core data and building their own business intelligence and analytics. This meant that every team creates its own business critical reporting.
The automation features meant the data warehouse had a constant stream of live daily updates, allowing each department to work with more data in terms of complexity.
Data from different sources – from the cloud, databases, applications and elsewhere – was brought into the data warehouse and can now be accessed without the need for extra development work.