Iceland Foods makes decisions at the speed of business with Microsoft Fabric and RTI

Iceland Foods, a fast-growing United Kingdom grocery chain, wanted to be able to work more efficiently and react more quickly to market conditions and customer trends through real-time insights.

To make the most of its transactional data, Iceland chose Microsoft Fabric and Fabric Real-Time Intelligence to unify data management across stores, improve performance for data processing and analytics workloads, and deliver the data needed in near real time.

Iceland Foods is already gaining insights into real-time business performance that wasn’t possible before. It can make rapid, data-informed changes on things like special promotions, inventory, and staffing based on customer needs and shopping trends.

With rapidly changing shopping trends and busy, cost-conscious customers, grocery stores around the world are looking for new ways to make operations efficient and the food shopping experience convenient and cost-effective. Iceland Foods, a fast-growing United Kingdom grocery chain with more than 960 stores and a highly-trafficked online site, is no exception. “The UK food retail sector is fast-paced and dynamic,” says Stuart Bickley, Head of Development at Iceland Foods. “To stay competitive, we must be agile and react quickly to market conditions and consumer trends."

For Iceland Foods, transactional data holds the most value in shaping business decisions, both in-store and online. “It helps us track sales, measure product and promotion performance, identify high traffic times across all stores, and assess inventory and staffing needs,” says Phil Oldfield, Head of Data Engineering at Iceland Foods.

"We wanted to adapt faster by getting that intelligence in real time,” adds Ben Howell, Data Engineer at Iceland Foods.

Data unification and real-time intelligence

Iceland Foods had been using Microsoft Azure, including Azure Synapse Analytics for its data analysis. “We’d been using Azure Synapse Analytics to pull data from different sources for analysis, but it required a lot of data preparation and aggregation, making it difficult to keep pace with demand for insights,” recalls Bickley. As a result, the team spent more time getting data into the system than gaining actionable intelligence.

Wanting a more automated, unified solution to manage and analyze streaming transactional data, Iceland chose Microsoft Fabric and Fabric Real-Time Intelligence. “We were impressed by Microsoft Fabric and its real-time intelligence innovation,” says Howell. The team also appreciated the unification of Azure services like Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Factory into a single platform. Additionally, Fabric interoperates with Azure AI Foundry, including Azure OpenAI Service, giving the company the ability to use AI-driven analytics for regulatory reporting, risk assessments, and customer insights.

“We were impressed by Microsoft Fabric and its real-time intelligence innovation.”

Ben Howell, Data Engineer, Iceland Foods

But it was Microsoft Fabric, with its low latency, speed of data intake, and ability to consume large datasets within minutes, that really struck the Iceland Foods IT team. “Fabric delivers a shortcut to the data ingestion process, reducing the need for extensive involvement from other teams,” explains Bickley. “Fabric pulls everything into one place: big data capabilities, SQL database capabilities, real-time intelligence. It massively reduces data movement and preparation, and data is easily shared across different platforms."

Data at the speed of business

Microsoft Fabric and Real-Time Intelligence are also supporting Iceland Foods in other ways, including:

Increased operational efficiency: The unified compute model and data processing capabilities of Fabric have helped Iceland Foods centralize data processes and potentially reduce infrastructure costs.
Enhanced security: With built-in security features, Fabric helps Iceland Foods further safeguard data.
Better collaboration and accessibility: The ability of Fabric to support seamless data flow across Iceland Foods means more people can access, use, and share data more effectively.

“Fabric pulls everything into one place: big data capabilities, SQL database capabilities, real-time intelligence. It massively reduces data movement and preparation, and data is easily shared across different platforms.”

Stuart Bickley, Head of Development, Iceland Foods

Though the project is still in early days, Iceland Foods is already seeing how fast access to data supports fast decision-making. For example, Iceland Foods teams can get near real-time details on individual product purchases to aggregated sales data. “This means we can make rapid changes on things like special promotions, inventory, and staffing based on customer needs and shopping trends,” says Oldfield. “We’re getting insights into real-time business performance that just wasn’t possible before.”

With this, Iceland Foods is looking to use Microsoft Fabric at the corporate level as a company-wide reporting and data management solution. Multiple data migrations from on-premises to Fabric are currently underway. “It’s exciting times,” says Bickley. “With Fabric and Real-Time Intelligence, we can keep pace with operational needs and customer trends. We’re getting data at the speed of business.”