case study
UST IQ helped global restaurant chain in Australia overcome data analytics challenges
OUR CLIENT
This global restaurant chain began franchise operations in Australia decades ago. Today, there are more than 650 locations across the country, and the company employs approximately 40,000 people.
THE CHALLENGE
IT team needed a scalable analytics solution to manage the increasing number of vision AI edge devices
The rapidly growing popular restaurant chain had new franchise locations opening regularly. The IT team installed several computer vision artificial intelligence (AI) edge devices at each restaurant site to collect operational data. However, the company’s IT team struggled to keep pace with the volume of incoming data from the new restaurant locations. Also, the team didn’t have sufficient data engineering skills to efficiently process, curate, and analyze the high volume of high-frequency data emanating from the edge devices—leading to lengthy lead times and added costs to onboard new locations. The restaurant franchise needed a highly scalable, cost-effective analytics solution to aggregate and present the vision inference metadata in detailed reports and intuitive dashboards with notification capabilities.
THE TRANSFORMATION
The four-location pilot program proved UST IQ met the needs of fast-growing restaurant franchise
The restaurant chain identified UST IQ as its data analytics platform because the solution could scale to support its 650+ locations. Its robust data explorer capabilities gave the company’s IT team flexibility to perform exploratory data analysis where the data originated at the edge devices before developing data pipelines to avoid ingesting unmanageable amounts of data. In just six weeks, the IT team conceptualized and launched a pilot project at four stores to test the solution, which was much faster than the typical six-month deployment timeframe for a project of this scope and scale. To ensure a seamless pilot program, the team integrated the UST IQ data platform into the company’s existing infrastructure and designed a custom data correlation engine.
THE IMPACT
UST IQ analytics solution helped restaurant chain improve customer experiences and employee productivity
The successful pilot project demonstrated that the UST IQ analytics solution provided the data processing, curation, and analysis capabilities the franchise company needed. Because the IT team gained the flexibility to manage data ingesting from edge devices, the company reduced the onboarding timeframe to open new restaurants. Also, the more detailed analytics insights reduced customer complaints and improved staff productivity.