Revolutionizing Data Accessibility and Analysis at The Hershey Company
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
- Retail
Use Cases
- Retail Store Automation
- Theft Detection
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
The Hershey Company, founded in 1894, is a global leader in the retail and consumer goods industry, known for making chocolate accessible to everyone. The company has consistently innovated to delight consumers and has recently reached a revenue milestone of $10 billion in 2022. Despite this success, Hershey is always thinking about growth and aims to continue delivering what consumers want. To stay ahead of market changes and make faster decisions, Hershey recognized the need for a clear, consistent view of their data. This led to the decision to build a Commercial Data Store (CDS) to serve as a single source of truth for commercial data across the entire organization.
The Challenge
The Hershey Company, a renowned name in the retail and consumer goods industry, was facing challenges in data management and analysis. Despite reaching a revenue milestone of $10 billion in 2022, the company was struggling with disconnected data sources, which prevented a single, consistent view of their data. This was a significant obstacle in making fast, data-driven decisions and staying ahead of market changes. The company aimed to build a Commercial Data Store (CDS) to serve as a single source of truth for commercial data across the entire organization. However, the complexity of Hershey’s data environment was further compounded by the fact that the company maintained separate data platforms to handle data for major retail customers.
The Solution
To overcome these challenges, Hershey chose the Databricks Lakehouse Platform as the foundation of their CDS. They also engaged Advancing Analytics, based on recommendations from third-party vendors, to build the foundation of their CDS platform using Databricks technology. Advancing Analytics used their Hydr8 framework to significantly reduce the time needed to get the CDS up and running. The platform uses Databricks for ETL and data processing and serves data through Databricks SQL. All of Hershey’s commercial data reporting is now based on Databricks SQL and runs through Tableau and Power BI. This has empowered decision-makers to visualize and easily interact with data, rather than relying on canned spreadsheet reports.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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