Client Overview
A leading Canadian retail enterprise operates one of the most diversified portfolios in North America, spanning retail, financial services, and real estate. With multiple banners and a large national footprint, the organization manages highly complex sales, loyalty, warehouse, and logistics operations across physical and digital channels.
As customer expectations evolved and operational scale increased, the organization set out to modernize its core retail and supply chain ecosystem. The goal was to unify fragmented systems, enable real-time visibility, and establish a scalable data foundation to support advanced analytics and AI-driven decision-making.
Ness partnered with the client as a strategic engineering and transformation partner across multiple programs spanning retail operations, data platforms, and AI-enabled analytics—bringing together system modernization, cross-cloud data unification, and intelligent analytics into a connected enterprise platform.
Customer Challenge
The client’s retail and supply chain ecosystem had evolved across multiple platforms, creating fragmentation, inefficiencies, and limited visibility. Key challenges included:
Key challenges
Disconnected systems across sales auditing, loyalty, warehouse management, and logistics
Inconsistent and delayed data flows impacting reporting and operational accuracy
Synapse-based architecture limiting unified governance and cross-cloud data sharing
Heavy reliance on manual processes and SQL-based reporting (4–8 hour delays)
Limited real-time visibility into shipments and yard operations
Absence of predictive analytics for demand and resource planning
What was at stake?
As the organization scaled its omnichannel operations, these limitations created growing operational and strategic risks.
Without transformation:
Leadership needed a unified approach to modernize systems, streamline operations, and enable real-time, data-driven decision-making.
Ness Solution
To address these challenges, Ness led a multi-year transformation focused on unifying retail operations, modernizing data platforms, and enabling AI-powered analytics.
Rather than treating each system independently, the transformation was designed as a connected ecosystem—bringing together sales, loyalty, warehouse, logistics, data, and analytics into a single, scalable foundation.
Key initiatives
Modernized sales auditing, loyalty, warehouse, and logistics systems with standardized workflows
Delivered 90+ integrations to unify enterprise systems
Enabled real-time logistics with trailer tracking, predictive ETAs, and yard automation
Migrated Synapse-based data platforms to Databricks with Unity Catalog governance
Enabled secure cross-cloud data sharing between Azure and GCP using Delta Sharing
Standardized ingestion and orchestration using Lakeflow Connect and Lakeflow Jobs
Built a unified Delta Lake foundation with governed data models
Deployed Databricks AI/BI Genie for natural language, self-service analytics
Developed predictive models for shipment demand, equipment, and driver planning
Executed phased migration with dual-run validation and legacy system retirement
Engagement model
What Changed?
The transformation replaced fragmented systems and siloed data with a unified, real-time, and intelligence-driven ecosystem.
The organization now operates with a single governed data foundation, integrated workflows, and self-service analytics—enabling faster decisions, improved visibility, and predictive capabilities across retail and supply chain operations.
Business Outcomes
Strategic impact
The transformation established a scalable foundation for long-term growth and innovation.
The organization is now able to:
By unifying operations, data, and intelligence, the client has built a modern retail and supply chain ecosystem designed for agility, scalability, and sustained competitive advantage.
Let’s Engineer What’s Next. Together.
Partner with us to build intelligent solutions faster and smarter — we’re ready when you are.
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