With a new data architecture and the introduction of the Denodo Platform, powered by data virtualization, the Bültel International Fashion Group, together with QuinScape, broke down data silos that have grown over decades, to regain control over the data.
The Bültel International Fashion Group is a global fashion company in the field of men’s and women’s fashion and is still mostly family-owned today. With its own brands CALAMAR and Hattric, as well as the Camel Active collection produced under license, the Salzbergen-based company has been successfully established for almost 60 years. With more than 1,000 committed employees, first-class sales and production partners all over the world, and its own production facilities in Asia, the Bültel Group sets standards for jackets, coats, jackets, waistcoats, shirts, knitwear, trousers, and accessories.
Redefining the Data Architecture
An interdisciplinary team was initially formed for the implementation, consisting of a data security expert, a business data analyst, and a consultant from the Bültel Group, as well as a data architect and a data engineer from QuinScape, the accompanying IT service provider. To meet the specific requirements of making data from different sources available on one platform, a new target architecture was designed around the Denodo Platform.
The milestones to be reached were normalization and reference-ability of the data, as well as making the data available through the new single source of truth.
The project began with an initial pilot in which to put the new process into practice – from data entry and preparation in the Denodo Platform to evaluation using Qlik visualization software. After the successful completion of the project, the team at Bültel was familiar with all processes and were trained accordingly to subsequently move to other use cases in the company. Above all, Bültel had an opportunity to understand data as a product and learned how to make data more readily usable for business development.
To implement further use cases, Bültel first created a coherent database. The company created five virtual databases for the areas of master data, finance, sales, logistics, and production, from around 120 tables, some of which were unstructured, which had accumulated over the decades. The missing links between the data areas in the original data could now be mapped in the Denodo Platform. In this way, Bültel was able to quickly transform the status quo into a sustainable model while also being able to modernize the legacy systems bit by bit.