Fresh Insights from High-Quality Data: How Migros is Delivering on the Full Potential of Business Intelligence

Migros is the largest retailer in Turkey, with more than 2500 outlets selling fresh produce and groceries to millions of people. To maintain high-quality operations, the company depends on fresh, accurate data. And to ensure high data quality, Migros depends on Talend.

The sheer volume of data managed by Migros is astonishing. The company’s data warehouse currently holds more than 200 terabytes, and Migros is running more than 7,000 ETL (extract, transform, load) jobs every day. Recently, the quality of that data became the focal point for the BI (business intelligence) team at Migros.

“We have 4,000 BI users in this company,” said Ahmet Gozmen, Senior Manager of IT Data Quality and Governance at Migros. “We produce 5-6 million mobile reports every year that our BI analysts see on their personal dashboards. If they can’t trust the timeliness or the accuracy of the reports, they can’t provide trustworthy guidance on key business decisions.”

In 2019, Mr. Gozmen and his team decided they needed a more reliable foundation on which to build data quality. “We were having a few issues with our data at that time,” he said. “There would be occasional problematic or unexpected values in reports—a store’s stock would indicate an abnormal level, for example—and the issue was in the data, not the inventory. We had to address these problems, and more than that we wanted to take our data analysis and BI capabilities to a higher level. And that’s why we looked at Talend with the help of Talend partner, Kara Danışmanlık.”

From Community to Commercial

Initially, Mr. Gozmen’s team used the non-commercial version of Talend Data Quality. “It was an open-source solution that we could download and set up in one day,” he said. “At first, we just wanted to see whether we could do something with this tool or not. We explored its capabilities, and we asked the Talend Community if we had questions or needed advice.”

Mr. Gozmen discovered that Talend had far more potential than he expected. “We found that the data quality tool was very powerful, and we started exploring what else we could do with Talend,” he said. “So we also downloaded the data integration package, then the big data package. Talend could handle the huge volumes of data we were dealing with. And very soon we started thinking about the licensed, commercial versions of these solutions, because we saw a great deal of potential not only for immediate needs but for future plans.”

“With Talend we can trust our data, so business leaders can trust our reports, so we can start to use big data in new ways to improve processes, supply chain performance, and business results.”

— Ahmet Gozmen, Senior Manager of IT Data Quality and Governance, Migros

By upgrading to the commercial versions, Migros also elevated the level of service and support that was available. “The Community served our purposes well in the early stages,” said Mr. Gozmen, “but with the commercial license we now have more personalized support and access to specialists who can help us immediately with any aspect of our implementation. In the transition process to a commercial license, our Talend GOLD partner, Kara Danışmanlık, helped us showcase the benefits of subscription products and also guided us during the evaluation of the subscription product that addresses our needs.”

From Better Data Quality to Big Data Dreams

With Talend Data Quality, Migros has improved the accuracy and reliability of its BI reporting, according to Mr. Gozmen. “We are a small department in a very big company,” he said, “but with help from Talend we can instill confidence in our reporting, and we can start to support other departments and have a larger impact on improving processes and even help generate more income.”

The higher level of data quality Migros has achieved with Talend has also led Mr. Gozmen to consider using Talend for future data initiatives. “We have big dreams, and we are testing the waters on several fronts,” he said. “We are exploring the possibilities for predictive analytics, and we feel Talend’s big data capabilities are a good match.”

The Migros team is also considering using Talend in moving from its current batch processing mode to real-time data analysis, according to Mr. Gozmen. “We are currently using date-minus-one or date-minus two batch processing, but we want to move to real-time big data predictive analytics and other advanced capabilities as soon as possible,” he said. “We are currently testing new models that can help us achieve these goals.”

While the business advantages of using Talend are manifesting themselves in past, present, and future use cases, Mr. Gozmen sums them up this way: “With Talend we can trust our data, so business leaders can trust our reports, so we can start to use big data in new ways to improve processes, supply chain performance, and business results.”