Case study Bon Preu Group
Bon Preu Group is currently one of the largest grocery companies in Catalonia and number 1 in customer satisfaction surveys for four consecutive years. Currently based in Les Masies de Voltregà, with over 200 stores, 8,700 employees and a turnover of €1.7 billion, Bon Preu Group started as a self-service store in Manlleu back in 1974. By 1988, the client decided to expand to hypermarkets by opening the first Esclat store in Vilafranca del Penedès.
The challenge
As a prominent retailer in one of the largest and most developed regions in Spain, Bon Preu gathers, manages and processes some of the most comprehensive data assets in the sector. Every day, significant volumes of data are generated as shoppers browse and purchase products from the Bon Preu online store and in the physical stores through loyalty cards.
This data is vital for the marketing department, which is in charge of analysing customer behaviour and creating effective campaigns. Without the proper systems in place and tools to efficiently process the data and offer valuable insights, it’s impossible to create efficient campaigns that have a significant impact. Given these shortcomings, Bon Preu decided to take action:
- Internalise a data analytics service and develop internal data analysis capabilities.
- Build a flexible platform and on-demand dashboards for the marketing department that would help them analyse customer behaviour.
The challenge was finding a partner that had the capabilities and experience to both build a robust and scalable data analytics platform and create an in-house data department using agile methodologies, giving Bon Preu flexibility and ownership over the data.
The solution
Developing and implementing a solution of this magnitude requires extensive knowledge of the sector, a multidisciplinary team and vast technological capabilities; therefore, Bon Preu chose NTT DATA as its trusted partner for this journey. Once a team of experts of different profiles was created, NTT DATA began analysing the different cloud platforms that potentially covered Bon Preu’s needs and satisfied the following characteristics:
Flexibility: integrate data streaming as well as batch data, and allow ad-hoc analysis and data discovery.
Agility: generate new reports easily and simplify the process of integrating new data sources.
Manage the data: data traceability during the processing phase, offer support for data governance and data quality control, and manage real-time monitoring of data storage.
Scalability: Incorporate large volumes of data in the future, data entries from web sources, and other structured and unstructured types of data.
An evaluation benchmark was put in place to analyse different options and, considering Bon Preu’s specific requirements, Microsoft Azure Full PAAS architecture was recommended as the best solution.
NTT DATA team was composed of data analysts, data architects, developers and experts in the business and retail sectors. The project lasted ten months and was divided into two main phases:
- Assessment: analyse the current systems and processes in order to build a new data repository that could meet Bon Preu’s needs.
- Development: define the processes and infrastructure that collect and process data, extract insights and develop the dashboards for the marketing department. Create the new solution after migrating a series of reports that were adapted with new functionalities.
At the end of the project, NTT DATA provided Bon Preu with the necessary capabilities to independently manage their own data internally, enabling a faster analysis of the information that will help build more effective personalised marketing campaigns.
“Every day, significant data is being generated by our more than 1 million clients while they browse and purchase our products in our online shops or our physical stores, using their loyalty cards. All this data is vital for our marketing department, which is in charge of customer behaviour and defining effective marketing campaigns. Developing and implementing a solution of this magnitude requires both extensive knowledge as well as Big Data technologies. That’s why we chose NTT DATA as a partner for this journey.” - Marc Torrent, Head of Data Analysis at Bon Preu.
The results
The results have been positive both in terms of project execution and from the operational and business point of view. Running the campaign manager in-house gives Bon Preu a lot of autonomy, flexibility, and in-depth insights regarding customer behaviour and the campaigns they run consistently.
The fact that many of the processes have been automated also helped Bon Preu gain in technical reliability when setting up promotions and increased the internal efficiency of the teams.
Why NTT DATA?
The extensive knowledge of the retail sector, together with the capabilities to escalate projects and the expert multidisciplinary teams that were assembled, allowed NTT DATA to deliver the best solution for Bon Preu. The close partnerships NTT DATA has with both Bon Preu and Microsoft Azure also played a key role in the success of this project because it allowed the collaboration to run smoothly.
