Data is at the heart of FLO operations, while Azure Synapse runs the core of the data

Established in 1960, FLO positions itself as a company that goes beyond retail with its wide network of stores, an immense e-trade volume, as well as the number of brands it carries. On its way to becoming a digital-focused, multi-channel, multi-brand global venture with more than 50 million pairs of online shoe sales annually, FLO is present across 21 countries on 3 continents through more than 650 stores with over 11 thousand employees. Providing wholesale services in addition to its online and offline sales channels, FLO has a robust wholesale operation for chain dealers with global customers in more than 40 countries. In addition to its retail business, the company enjoys surging popularity thanks to its InStreet brand, a favorite among sportswear lovers. FLO has many other strong brands in its portfolio such as Kinetix, Polaris, Lumberjack, U.S. Polo ASSN., Dockers by Gerli, and Nine West. As a shoe-selling platform active in various channels, focus on technology is of paramount importance. Continuing to invest in technology infrastructure to ensure that the multi-channel and multi-brand structures can interoperate globally, FLO works to make its technologies speak to each other in the best way possible and replicate the domestic achievements in its overseas operations. FLO strives to offer the best possible experience across all platforms aiming to streamline customer experience online and offline.

Industry-leading projects with advance technology

FLO has implemented many technology projects in recent years and considers Microsoft its top technology partner. Opting for Microsoft technologies for many products and product families in use, the company also develops software and services in-house. Considering Office 365 as a must, the company addresses after-sales services with Dynamics 365 CRM. All the rent management systems of its more than 650 stores are carried out on a Microsoft Dynamics powered product suite. FLO uses Microsoft SQL Server as its database and .NET C# and Microsoft technologies as its programming language and aims to be a pioneer in the industry with value-adding projects developed by its in-house team.

Aware that that technological investment and strides should go beyond software and product development, FLO put great onus to the data generated internally. Stating billions of lines of data sets are generated in each module, “the most valuable commodity in the world is data, and those who manage it the best become the world's largest companies", says FLO IT Director Özcan Ayyıldız and expresses their reasoning as to why they decided to manage data better. With this in mind, the company went for a revision of its data warehouses and add power to its reporting and analytical structures.

Azure Synapse: A comprehensive data warehouse solution powered by cloud

Before the migration, on-premises data warehouse environment required many business processes such as disk reviews, checking and maintaining storage performance, service updates, tracking and testing patch installations. İbrahim Çalışkan, Business Intelligence Unit Manager, emphasizes that Azure Synapse eliminates all this as a cloud solution and clears up space for teams to focus on their core business. While project-based growing needs required significant planning and investment previously, Azure Synapse allowed streamlining of steps involved optimizing the process. Çalışkan adds that this meant teams were able to reach areas needed within minutes and accordingly make use of the tools to respond to their requests timely and with the sense of urgency needed.

In the PoC process, teams examined DWUs (the data warehouse units that express Azure Synapse system capacity), opted for a data-intensive and widely used business unit as a model and performed the PoC on it. The results of this PoC, in which sales and inventory data were analyzed together, revealed that there was room for 50%+ performance improvement.

Enqura carried out the entire migration stages, while relevant teams at FLO conducted the follow-up and testing. The project, which stands out as the first in retail of this scale, was concluded with exciting, instructive, and improved outputs for all stakeholders turning the story around from a challenge to a practical solution. 

Enqura project manager Faruk Erbaş states that visualization was not the only purpose in data, but after examining with FLO the added value of the peripheral components that come with Azure Synapse with the aim of contributing to other processes, the project phase was kicked off. Now that all the planned structures are running live on Azure Synapse, teams continue to work on the new platform with ever-increasing data density and datasets. Having a clear number of integrations, teams also benefit fully here, both in terms of raising awareness and offering transparency.

This new infrastructure created at FLO has also become a central data source for analytical solutions. Covering all the keywords per data analytics, this platform offers every possible solution needed by users. It suffices to update and run the code with Azure Synapse, which eliminates the need for analysis and makes system ready to operate.

FLO now has an even stronger structure to improve its business and offer its customers the best experience every time with the data-driven moves it has made in a world where data lies at the heart of digital transformation.