With the rollout of a new loyalty program and compliance with new GDPR requirements, supermarket chain Jumbo realized it needed a better and more reliable way to track and unify data—especially with its growing customer base.

For a modern supermarket chain, customer data is comparable to digital food; to serve the customer well, you need insight into data about what customers like and dislike. Without the right nourishment, you can lose customer loyalty.

With its ever-increasing touchpoints and channels, Jumbo's growing customer database was difficult to maintain. Additionally, its assets grew considerably via acquisitions, especially with the addition of La Place, a Dutch restaurant chain that specializes in freshly made, deli-style foods. Not only were the number of stores increasing, but each store contained a large number of products, with each product having up to 400 unique attributes.

In the midst of increasing data, Jumbo wanted to introduce a personalized savings program for customers—but needed to accelerate its master data management program to gain and maintain more control over its data. With greater control, Jumbo could measure and deliver insights into the customer journey—and properly comply with growing privacy legislation, such as GDPR.

According to Tim Hehenkamp, executive director of technology and data at Jumbo, "Our customer base is becoming more and more diverse, behavior is constantly changing, and we're adding more contact channels. Differentiating at the level of the individual customer is necessary to stay ahead of the competition."

To better manage business data and better understand customer experiences, Jumbo needed to adopt a modern master data management platform: "Our data was fragmented and stored in multiple systems. We needed one overarching system to do this management. For example, if customers wanted to have their data destroyed under the GDPR, this should be possible at the touch of a button," says Marc van Weelden, product owner master data at Jumbo.

With guidance from TIBCO Business Partner Systemation, Jumbo used TIBCO's master data management solution TIBCO EBX® software to create a loyal customer base, enabling Jumbo to put the customer first by continuously exceeding customer expectations. The supermarket chain was looking for a centralized master data management approach that was applicable across multiple domains and could create a 360-degree view of the company and its customers. "Ultimately, we wanted to move towards a single source of data managed from one central location," says Rudy Vonken, manager data and solutions at Jumbo.

To get started, Jumbo selected Systemation to help with the project. Based on past experience with similar projects, Systemation outlined a workable and sustainable solution based on EBX software that could manage several domains. The TIBCO-certified Systemation EBX Development Accelerator and Automated Deployment Framework provided savings in lead time and costs by up to 40 percent and now fully supports automated production of master data management applications.

The TIBCO EBX platform's data model capabilities had an immediate effect on underlying data structures. The platform also supports an agile working method, so teams from Systemation and Jumbo can adjust and expand the data model step-by-step. New data sources can now be easily connected to enable new business initiatives, such as creating straightforward recipes for the La Place restaurants, streamlining logistics data for store supplies, and maintaining Jumbo's FoodCoach App.

According to Jaap Franse, founder and CEO of Systemation, "We are excited and proud to have worked on making TIBCO’s EBX Master Data Management solution become such an important cornerstone in the Jumbo application architecture and data management capabilities. Multiple agile teams, supported by Systemation, deliver tangible business results, all part of a strategic MDM roadmap across data domains like customers, recipes, ingredients, products, and logistics."

With a single source of data, Jumbo can easily keep track of customer information across all departments: online shopping, shipping, payment, and more. Having control over its master data means that Jumbo knows exactly what its customers are ordering and how its suppliers are delivering. With TIBCO EBX software solutions, Jumbo teams can enter, manage, and validate data for better customer service.

Mastered data is crucial for a growing customer loyalty program. If a customer can’t keep track of their points, they’re much less likely to continue to shop with that store. Likewise, the more rewards a customer earns, the more likely they are to visit and enjoy the store. Jumbo can see what customers are interested in and keep track of all customer data—and the company can gain insights into trends over time as the team continues to add to their growing customer base.

Jumbo reports that by gradually connecting more systems within one domain and by adding more domains throughout the new platform, its team implemented customer and location domains within six months. And within two and a half years, a large part of the company's data is already managed from the new platform.

According to Vonken, "We are well on the way to modeling, controlling, and sharing all our data between applications. Our data model is ready, and EBX software will be rolled out across all domains soon. We now have a base for data governance, reference data, and analytics so we can create a 360-degree view of our customers."

Since Jumbo started the project with the customer domain, the results were immediately visible. Jumbo's loyalty program launched seamlessly and complies fully with GDPR regulations. Because customer data is organized, there are fewer customer questions, so data specialists can focus on other projects that add value. Additionally, Jumbo customer service does not have as many issues to resolve related to incorrect customer data—allowing the team to take more service calls.

Thanks to the model-based approach of EBX software, settings only need to be adjusted once to be applied everywhere in the domains covered by the EBX solution—streamlining and improving data management throughout the company. Van Weelden adds: "We can no longer do without data management at Jumbo. We make so many decisions based on data, and to do this, we have to be talking about the same data."