Home
Case Studies
grocery-retailer-mq
This grocery retailer moves approximately 50 million messages across the country each day. With IBM MQ and IBM App Connect, the company updated its operations so that data was available in near-real-time.
This grocery retailer struggled to make the most of its data. Each store batched data and sent it to a central warehouse once a day, but the delay hampered analysis and theft prevention.
Using an in-store ESB with IBM MQ and IBM App Connect, the company updated to a model that allowed data to be processed in seconds.
The company operates 2,400 grocery stores throughout the country, and its operations are spread across numerous states. Because of the geographic range, the company used to manage information in large batches. Once a day, each store collected its data and sent it to a central data warehouse for analysis.
However, with the number of associated stores, this resulted in roughly 50 million messages traveling to and from the stores every day. These messages included transaction logs from checkout lanes, credit checks and pharmacy information verification.
The batch processing method they were using resulted in delayed data analysis and sometimes hampered theft prevention efforts. The grocery retailer decided to make an update so that it could access daily statistics and improve its customer service, supply chain management and more. It knew that its new solution needed to collect data in a timely manner so that it could make informed decisions about the company as a whole. It also knew that it needed to be able to handle large volumes of information.
To improve its data transfer, the grocery retailer implemented an in-store Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) based on IBM MQ and IBM App Connect. This solution included IBM IBM MQ’s Telemetry capability, which store controllers used to publish messages to their store’s ESB. MQ Telemetry is designed to connect endpoints that don’t support a full MQ client but need the same level of reliability.
“The ESB provides reliable data transformation and delivery to all of the endpoints in the store which use a variety of protocols,” says the software engineer. “It also enables us to transform messages and publish them so they get sent to remote endpoint systems that might be interested in them.”
With their new system in place, the company can transfer data from any store to its central hub in near-real-time.
With IBM MQ and IBM App Connect, the grocery retailer’s architecture has been streamlined. Previously, data was batched and processed daily, and now, the data warehouse receives transactions within seconds of a checkout. “[This] message broker is rock-solid,” says a software engineer. “It has a relatively small footprint, and it is a world-class integration engine.”
Legal
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2018. IBM Corporation, Software Group (or appropriate division, or no division) Route 100, Somers, NY 10589
Produced in the United States of America December 2018
IBM, the IBM logo and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the
Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/trademark.
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.
.