Commando makes luxurious wearable intimates and apparel that are popular with consumers and fashion runway designers alike. The company sells directly to consumers on its website, through boutique shops, and high-end retailers like Saks and Nordstrom.
Commando needed to support growth across its direct-to-consumer and partner retail lines of business (LOBs). It needed to get complete, reliable data in the hands of its 100 employees. Scattered data was hard to keep in check, causing inaccurate reporting, which severely hampered growth. The IT team consisted of just two people—there was no way they could build a robust data pipeline fast enough to avoid customer service or product quality issues. Commando deployed CData Sync to turn its Google BigQuery warehouse into a reporting engine, providing every team with the data and insights to make timely, informed decisions.
The challenge: Putting underutilized data to work
As half of Commando’s two-person IT team, Greg Morris knew when he started his position as Chief Technology Officer that the company’s data was being underutilized. The only way to get the most value from it would require significant automation.
Commando faced major challenges in generating actionable insights across departments. Its technology stack — including BlueCherry ERP, Shopify, and Microsoft Dynamics—lacked proper integration, leaving data siloed and difficult to manage.
The fragmentation of data across so many different platforms created serious barriers to decision-making, which impeded predictable business growth. The apparel company risked incorrect order fulfillment and reduced customer retention, dragging sales numbers below their targets.
The solution: Unifying data to empower teams and growth
Greg Morris, Commando’s Chief Technology Officer, tasked his small team to investigate tools that could address Commando’s needs. The team needed a user-friendly platform to consolidate the apparel company’s existing applications and replicate data for analysis and generating reports. The solution also needed to handle high volumes of data, monitor updates, and integrate new applications as the company grew.
The team decided that CData Sync fulfilled all their requirements, offering seamless integration with existing systems and the flexibility to adapt to new applications without complex coding—all through an intuitive interface. Sync was also easy to set up and use, allowing even a very small IT team like Commando’s to manage all the different systems and datasets efficiently.
Perhaps most importantly, Sync’s connection-based pricing allowed the lean Commando team to move around five billion rows of monthly data at a fixed cost. Replicating the same amount of data with usage-based pricing tools would have been more expensive than the company could justify.
Once Sync was set up, Greg’s team jumped right in, integrating and replicating their systems into BigQuery. They quickly created useful dashboards for different functions within the company—from warehouse operations to financial tracking. The insights from the newly integrated data allowed Commando’s business operations to get the data they needed to inform their insights for quick and efficient decision-making.
The streamlined internal workflows that Sync enabled also opened an opportunity for Commando to use its cleaned and unified datasets for external applications, which would provide its customers with vital information.
The outcome: Data-driven culture, transformed operations, and a future-ready business
What began as Commando’s straightforward search for better data integration transformed its business into a data-driven culture. CData provided the platform, enabling real-time reporting from streamlined data. From that foundation, the company’s teams could collaborate better, identify industry trends quickly, and eliminate the guesswork caused by disconnected data. The streamlined customer data revealed fit issues and other preferences, which helped the product development team refine new designs and create better-fitting styles.
Building on the now streamlined processes, Commando plans to expand its data strategy by exploring AI and Google Cloud technologies. This forward-thinking insight will help the apparel company develop new applications, including customer-facing chatbots, to enhance the customer service experience.
Greg knew that making data truly useful―and doing it with a lean IT team―would be the key to unlocking growth. CData Sync provided the foundation to make it happen, streamlining Commando’s operations and enabling real-time insights across the business. Reflecting on the journey, he sums up the experience well: "Data integration and analytics have been transformative for Commando, driving growth and improving our operations."
Set your business on a path for growth with CData Sync
Today’s organizations need to connect their entire stack to deliver timely, accurate information from real-time data, helping business operations run smoothly. CData Sync provides the foundation to build data integration pipelines from any source to any application—no matter where it is—without complicated coding or specialized training.
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