Discover how Christmas Tree Shops tapped technology to complete the separation from its previous corporate parent in less than a year.
Christmas Tree Shops (CTS) has tapped technology to complete the separation from its previous corporate parent in less than a year.
CTS is a specialty retailer selling a wide range of goods, from furniture, home decor and bedding, to kitchenware and holiday decorations. CTS’ goal is to help consumers express themselves and celebrate every season through unmatched selection and value. The company began a separation from its previous corporate parent, Bed Bath and Beyond, after being sold in 2020, meaning it needed to separate itself from operational technologies and platforms it had been a part of for nearly 20 years. The team also had a deadline of less than a year to complete the task, as it needed to be technologically independent with a bullet-proof infrastructure before the start of the 2021 busy holiday shopping season.
With SnapLogic’s Intelligent Integration Platform CTS was able to become technologically independent while upgrading and integrating its hybrid-cloud technology operations, all prior to the start of peak holiday season. CTS has completed more than 250 integrations in the past year using the SnapLogic platform, improving and accelerating operational and analytical data flow across the enterprise.
“We had a mix of legacy, off-the-shelf, and self-developed systems at the time – some of those systems served our needs well, others less so. It would have been cost-prohibitive to update and integrate all of those systems as we made the split,” said Chris Corbin, VP, enterprise systems at Christmas Tree Shops. “We saw this as an opportunity to modernize our operations and the technology running them, by upgrading core existing systems while at the same time bringing on board newer, best-of-breed cloud technologies that allowed us to explore new opportunities.”
CTS did not want to lose existing data and information that had been stored in their corporate parent’s systems, but it also needed to move fast. The company turned to SnapLogic to empower it to integrate core legacy systems with new, cloud-based technologies in order to streamline and speed up business processes across HR, Finance, Sales, Operations, and more. For example, SnapLogic helped CTS connect its existing time-and-attendance solution used across its 80-plus stores with its recent implementation of Workday, ensuring all employees were paid promptly for time worked, without disruption.
In addition to improving their time-and-attendance function in stores, SnapLogic also helped CTS gain visibility into near real-time sales during the busy holiday shopping period.
“Under our previous parent company, access to information was a struggle across the board, and our leadership had no visibility into intraday store performance. Using SnapLogic, we were able to quickly parse sales from our legacy Point of Sale (POS) system and provide hourly sales reads within a few days of receiving the request,” said Corbin. This capability allowed CTS leadership access to information they would have previously not received until the next day, thus providing an opportunity to adjust strategies to best meet the needs of the business.
“It was critical that while undertaking this separation and updating our technology infrastructure that we not impact the front line of the business – the selling of goods as well as the onboarding and compensation of our employees had to continue without interruption,” added Corbin. “SnapLogic’s ease-of-use and fast time-to-value enabled us to complete these integrations quickly and be ready for the holiday season when both the volume of sales and the number of seasonal staff increased.”
“Ease-of-use coupled with enterprise power has always been at the core of our platform,” said Craig Stewart, Chief Data Officer at SnapLogic. “We’ve architected it such that users of all skill levels across the business can be productive quickly while ensuring the platform holds up to the most complex enterprise integration requirements. Many organizations are in situations similar to CTS – where integrations need to happen quickly to speed up business processes and data flow across the enterprise, all with zero downtime or disruption to the business. We’re thrilled to have helped CTS rebuild its infrastructure during this important transition and look forward to continued partnership.”
Source: risnews.com
