A leading global convenience store chain needed to create a new data architecture and management foundation—modernizing its technology platform to improve access to sales data, better manage its supply chain and implement robust analytics for predictive decision making.

Our client sought a scalable, flexible solution that could meet the demands of its diverse, complex system of franchisees. They needed a way to quickly integrate new applications, perform audits, increase and improve ad-hoc reporting capability, apply similar business rules across the organization and reduce overhead. Critically, management wanted to be able to aggregate and analyze store data in near real time, to customize sales at various locations based on specific customer needs.

Working with the Invent, the retailer produced an Insights concierge providing end-to-end data and analytics services to guide marketing strategy and maximize ROI, resulting in an array of demonstrable business benefits. The concierge allowed for the development of scalable data pipelines enabling analytics and reporting and optimized performance of current data infrastructure to remove blockers in decision making. From an analytic viewpoint, the company defined measurement frameworks and KPIs for campaign effectiveness and return on marketing investments ROMI), enabling better decision making.

The company also developed advanced Analytics including AB testing, simulation, and measurement, providing ongoing insights on campaign performance measurement, customer engagement and understanding, customer purchase behavior and campaign planning and optimization we Invent helped develop a consumption layer with a production of insights systems and delivered key findings and recommendations to drive better decision making on campaign design and targeting.

Tracking orders for better deliveries In the age of information symmetry, customers can find everything they need to know about competing retail products in an instant. Now, there are only limited ways in which a retailer can truly differentiate themselves from competitors. One way is through customer experience – and in modern retail, order delivery plays a critical role. Customers want to hold their order in their hands as soon as they purchase it and unbox it as soon as they receive it. So, an estimated delivery date and time, and real-time updates on order status and location are crucial. And with the large uptick in online grocery shopping, companies themselves want to gain a complete view of order deliveries to help them with efficient carrier assignment, optimization of delivery routes, reduction in misplacements, and faster delivery.

This required an assessment of the individual requirements for each application and then the execution of the necessary steps for application migration. In implementing the order tracking application, the embarked on a four- month journey with the business to migrate to a microservices-based architecture. This was based on ADMnext’s Application Modernization Principles and required the isolation of different functionalities into specific microservices and the configuration of the deployment into the Openshift container platform. we designed a blueprint based on the target architecture for deployment sequence and integration and then employed agile methodologies to redevelop and test the necessary components before deployment to the new environment. The delivery team leveraged Sencha for frontend and a propriety Devon framework (based on Hibernate object- relational mapping and Spring technologies) for the back-end. Apache Kafka (an open-source stream-processing software platform) was used for application messaging.

From an analytic viewpoint, the company defined measurement frameworks and KPIs for campaign effectiveness and return on marketing investments (ROMI), enabling better decision making. The company also developed advanced Analytics including AB testing, simulation, and measurement, providing ongoing insights on campaign performance measurement, customer engagement and understanding, customer purchase behavior and campaign planning and optimization we Invent helped develop a consumption layer with a production of insights systems and delivered key findings and recommendations to drive better decision making on campaign design and targeting. They also provided marketing operations support and automation, list management, and process automation. Results In partnership with Invent, the global cafe and retailer established new marketing practices that cut costs and enhanced customer experiences. With the new marketing activities structure, they were equipped with ongoing analytics and measurement services for marketing and loyalty programs across channels and a range of campaigns. The retailer was able to optimize their speed to insight, with a 96% reduction in processing time from 24+ hours to just 55 minutes. Reduction in mass marketing spend was enabled through personalized marketing to the right customers. we Invent also provided insights for corporate marketing to guide their marketing strategy to maximize ROMI.

The road ahead with ADMnext After developing and implementing this state-of-the-art ordering application, the retailer are now planning to expand the relationship even further with application migration to Google cloud and thermograph integration with the mobile application, which will enable the carrier to ensure the freshness of food packages. Additionally, is looking to help improve order rejection management for reverse logistics and extend geofencing functionality to store the arrival and departure timestamps from the destination. Finally, the retailer plans to work and develop a new module that tracks goods movement from the supplier to the distribution center to offer its employees and customers an even smoother and more rapid delivery experience.