ATU modernized their BI-Architecture: From Complex Data-Streams to Real Time Transparency
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Company Profile
With around 9,000 employees, 525 branches, and annual sales of just under one billion euros, ATU is one of the leading service providers in the German automotive market. As a nationwide network of branches and workshops, the efficient handling of data plays a central role in its day-to-day business. Every day, enormous amounts of business-critical data are generated from shop, service, and personnel processes, which are crucial for branch management, capacity planning, and forecast.
To
leverage this information as a strategic success factor, you need a powerful
and scalable business intelligence architecture that creates transparency,
automates processes, and enables informed decisions in real time.
Growing Amounts of Data Slow Down Business Intelligence
For many years, ATU used Cubeware as its central BI solution. However, with the company's strong growth, the system increasingly reached its limits. Enormous amounts of data had to be processed from various upstream systems such as AX shop software, SAP, web shops, and appointment scheduling software, often without sufficient documentation.
Different evaluation logics in the departments and the lack of a uniform data model made consistent analyses difficult. This made reporting increasingly complex and difficult to compare, especially for branch managers who rely on up-to-date and reliable key figures. It quickly became clear that without a modern and scalable data integration platform, the business intelligence strategy could not be continued.
To lay the foundation for a future-proof data architecture, ATU decided to partner with the HICO Group. Together, they completely modernized the data integration. Qlik Talend Data Integration forms the backbone of the new cloud-based architecture. The decisive factors were the HICO Group's extensive experience in migrating complex BI systems and its in-depth expertise in the productive use of Talend in corporate environments.
From Idea to Company-Wide Data Platform
- Björn Müller, Business Intelligence Architect, ATU
The implementation was carried out step by step in close coordination between specialist departments, BI teams, and IT. Data structures were analyzed, integration logics defined, and productively implemented in regular workshops. ATU integrated two years of historical sales data at an early stage to enable sound planning and forecast analyses. At the same time, key users were trained so that they could independently manage integrations, monitoring, and system enhancements in the future.
Today, Talend handles the complete integration of heterogeneous source systems, from branch sales and workshop data to web shop, SAP, and HR data. The architecture is complemented by an AWS S3 data lake for raw data and Snowflake as a central data warehouse, to which Talend transfers the processed data.
The result is a powerful and future-proof data platform that creates transparency, accelerates processes, and supports data-driven decisions at all levels.
Real-Time Transparency
Thanks to the new data architecture, ATU now has a highly scalable and stable data integration solution. Access times to key performance indicators have been significantly reduced, and much of the data is available in near real time. At the same time, data quality has improved noticeably, with all data flows fully documented and traceable at all times.
This benefits branch managers and specialist departments in particular, who can now access up-to-date information more quickly and make more informed decisions. Analyses are now available across all locations, more reliable, and significantly easier to use. ATU has thus laid the foundation for sustainably managing and further developing data-driven business processes.
Following the successful launch, ATU is focusing on the continuous development of its data architecture. Plans include expanding the central data warehouse, continuously improving data quality, and connecting additional upstream systems. In addition, the company wants to leverage additional automation potential to make processes more efficient and further increase the added value of the platform.
ATU is investing in artificial intelligence and innovative analytics tools for the long term in order to continuously optimize data-driven processes and tap into new value creation potential.
