A Journey to AI-Driven Realtime, Multi-source Analytics via ELT — In Two Days
Snowflake Gelato is a rapidly growing UK-based gelato company with nine locations in the UK and two internationally. As part of their expansion plans, they needed to improve their analytics.
This case study explores how Ibrahim Khan and Zahra Masood, Snowflake Gelato’s Business Analyst team, leveraged Precog to radically simplify loading data into Snowflake from Cin7 Core (inventory management), MarketMan (restaurant management), Xero (accounting), and Workforce (workforce management). Once effective and dependable ELT was in place, Ibrahim turned to the key area of focus: analysis and reporting.
How hard is it to get real-time data from four SaaS sources?
“Zapier and other solutions were not able to do the job that we needed, which was to build accurate data pipelines in a relatively speedy time.” — Ibrahim Khan
Before adopting Precog, Ibrahim faced several challenges that prevented his business from quickly and easily understanding fundamental drivers (and blockers) of growth.
- Time-consuming manual data processing: The company relied on manual data processing from multiple sources, including exporting data and using spreadsheets. This process was extremely time-consuming and was prone to error.
- Increasing costs: To meet the demands of the company’s strategists, Ibrahim was looking for solutions. The vendors he approached had estimates exceeding $30,000 — for integrating just four data sources. And the time estimates were between two and three months.
- Complexity and delays: Some potential solutions required months of development time to create ETL/ELT pipelines, delaying their ability to leverage data for critical business functions.
- Data integration: Key insights would come not from looking at one data source, but they needed complex relationships between their different systems to achieve the right insights.
“The vendors and consultants I reviewed wanted $30,000 and more — and their timelines were months — Precog was affordable and done in a matter of days.” — Zahra Masood
The new era of real-time business analytics
Ibrahim and Zahra found an ideal solution in Precog to address their data analytics needs. Key aspects of the solution include:
- Automation: Precog enabled the automation of data collection and integration from various sources, making it a seamless process. This ensured that they had access to fresh, real-time data regardless of what the source was.
- Cost-effectiveness: Precog offered a cost-effective alternative to other vendors, making it accessible for a growing company with a limited budget. Precog was 10x more affordable than the competing solutions.
- Ease-of-use: The platform is user-friendly and requires minimal maintenance, reducing the overhead associated with data management.
How valuable are real-time insights?
The adoption of Precog brought several benefits to Snowflake Gelato.
- Significant time savings: Data preparation time was significantly reduced from 10-15 minutes daily to 30 seconds with Precog.
- Operational efficiency: Real-time data access across their entire business allowed Ibrahim to bring deep and meaningful insights to his team.
- Improved forecasting and budgeting: The ability to use real-time data for forecasting and budgeting led to more accurate financial planning.
- Supply chain optimization: The company could use data analytics to optimize its supply chain, ensuring they were adequately prepared for seasonal changes.
- Marketing insights: Data analytics offered insights into customer ordering patterns, enabling the marketing team to tailor their strategies for better results across seasons.
Tableau dashboard using data from Cin7, XERO, MaretMan, and Workforce.com
The new age AI-driven ELT
“We needed to find something that was easy — that could do all the hard work and heavy lifting for us. And it had to be reliable and affordable as well. That’s what we found in Precog.” — Ibrahim Khan
Snowflake Gelato’s new data management and analytics process exemplifies the unprecedented impact of what Precog’s ELT solution can do for businesses. By automating data collection and loading, teams can spend 100% of their time providing business insights — data preparation and manual loading are fully automated now.
The ease of use and cost-effectiveness of Precog made it an ideal solution for a rapidly growing company that was looking to drive expansion on sound insights. Precog has enabled Snowflake Gelato to make data-driven decisions with confidence, ensuring the company’s continued success and growth in a competitive market.
