Omnichannel Article Analytics for a Major Retailer

Challenge

A major retailer needed a unified view of article performance across multiple sales channels: online, stationary stores, and partner networks. The existing data environment lacked a harmonized article master. Product data from different channels lived in separate systems with inconsistent structures, and cross-channel performance comparison was impossible.

Two specific business needs drove the initiative. First, advertising and promotion KPIs needed to be linked to article master data to improve steering of product flow and article sales. Second, the company relied on external sales service providers and lacked the data foundation to verify invoices and evaluate provider performance across the full article portfolio.

Approach

Alligator Company implemented a Data Vault-based integration architecture with dbt for business-layer transformations and Datavault Builder for automation and end-to-end data lineage. The team integrated article data from online, stationary, and partner channels into a single, consistent article master using Data Vault. New data sources can be added flexibly without restructuring existing models.

On top of this harmonized master, Alligator Company built an Article Lifecycle Model that enriches each article with performance and evaluation KPIs: sales volume, inventory levels, returns, and advertising metrics. This unified data foundation then enabled systematic analysis of externally purchased sales services: invoice verification became straightforward, and performance and quality of external providers could be assessed across the entire article portfolio.

To complement internal ERP and POS data sources, the team used Airbyte to ingest data from external APIs, which brought third-party information into the same integrated model.

Stack: Exasol, dbt Core, Datavault Builder, Airbyte

Outcome

A harmonized article master replaced the fragmented per-channel data and is now the single reference for product information across all channels. The Article Lifecycle Model with performance KPIs enables data-driven decisions on product flow, assortment, and promotional effectiveness.

Invoices from sales service providers can now be verified quickly, and provider performance can be analyzed systematically across the entire article portfolio. Cross-channel article performance insights are available in near-real-time, giving the business faster access to the data behind product decisions.