Running a Cloudera Hadoop cluster on Amazon Web Services, Paytronix gains insight into customer behavior it couldn’t tease out of a database.

With fewer than 100 employees, Paytronix Systems technically fits within the small-business category, however it has an oversized reputation inside the restaurant industry, fueled partially by its ability to deliver big-data driven customer insights.

Paytronix helps restaurant chains (and, more recently, convenience store chains) run customer loyalty programs and marketing campaigns. It’s been a knowledge-intensive business since its founding in 2001. In 2012, the corporate started experimenting with a Cloudera-based Hadoop cluster running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It hasn’t looked back.

Two things people say concerning the cloud: It’s for SMBs, and it’s for tire kicking and sandbox development. But as Paytronix has learned, it isn’t only for SMBs, and additionally it is useful as a production platform, not only tire kicking. Even the most important companies on earth are choosing to run Hadoop inside the cloud, as is the case on the 70,000-plus-employee pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. Merck Research Laboratories is running a Hortonworks cluster on AWS because the basis of the Merck Data Science Platform.

[See execs from Merck, Paytronix, and the elements Company on our big data panel on the March 31-April 1 InformationWeek Conference.]

Paytronix still uses Microsoft SQL Server to run its transactional systems and knowledge warehouse, but Hadoop is used to research point-of-sale and loyalty program data collected from greater than 8,000 restaurants, including locations of chains corresponding to Panera, Papa Gino’s, and Outback Steakhouse. A majority of these chains collect a similar kinds of data, but every one has an additional data model, making it impossible to make use of a single data model to investigate the client behavior patterns separately for every chain.

The company uses its cloud-based Hadoop cluster to store check-level detail from every restaurant in a sequence. If a series changes its menu or adds data points to its loyalty membership database, Paytronix doesn’t must worry about changing an information model or ETL routines. With the combo of Scoobi, Hive queries, and R-based data modeling, it’s spotting customer behavior patterns it couldn’t see before.

When we last spoke to Paytronix, it had learned to identify customers dining with children — a giant impetus for eaterie dining for a lot of chains. When customers join loyalty programs, the restaurant doesn’t always collect a lot of information, or even if it does, customers won’t always inform you they’re parents. Then there are grandparents, aunts, uncles, and nannies who’ve no children of their household but nonetheless dine out frequently with children.

Using Hadoop, Paytronix can see when customers are dining in groups early and ordering children’s entrees, Shirley Temples, or milk — sure signs that children are a number of the guests. These customers could be targeted for child-related marketing campaigns — offering discounts or free desserts — which will give restaurants an important boost in business. Another Hadoop-based analysis Paytronix has put into production spots coupon redemption fraud, behavior that has a tendency to shows up in patterns tied to precise waiters and waitresses.

Paytronix now has not less than seven sorts of customer segmentation analyses in production on Hadoop, with one of the crucial latest being a limited-time offer (LTO) analysis. CEO Andrew Robbins described LTOs, just like the McDonald’s McRib sandwich, because the “life blood” of restaurant chains, because they maintain menus fresh, test new flavor profiles, and often result in permanent menu changes.

“On the top level, you will discover in case your sales went up or down, but it’s harder to make a decision who an LTO attracted,” Robbins explained. “You a lot desire to target an overly specific group with LTOs, like Millennials, so that you wish to see whether that group bought the special item and what they stopped buying.”

In the absence of hard demographic data from loyalty programs, Paytronix may also draw inferences about customer age from social media profiles. Here, too, Hadoop’s ability to accommodate variable and loosely structured data is a bonus.

Paytronix has backed off a plan to establish a Hadoop cluster at the premises, since it has too many internal projects happening, consistent with Robbins. The corporate has also found, through a up to date incident, that you can still detect and get over a node failure using AWS tools.

Paytronix’s data group has 10 employees, but only four interact with Hadoop in a single way or another, and just one was a brand new hire. One “exceptionally bright” leader inside the group championed the project, got the deployment rolling, and now administers the cluster on AWS, Robbins said. an information warehousing veteran has become adept with Hive and extracting data sets from Hadoop. A Java developer works in Scoobi, that’s written in Scala, as a simpler technique to handle MapReduce processing.

If the Paytronix experience can function a guide, SQL-savvy data professionals can adapt to new technology. And with the assistance of the cloud, rolling out a platform like Hadoop won’t require a military of latest employees.

Interop Las Vegas, March 31 to April 4, brings together thousands of technology professionals to find the most up-tp-date and cutting-edge technology innovations and techniques to drive their organizations’ success, including BYOD security, the newest cloud and virtualization technologies, SDN, the net of factors, and more. Attend educational sessions in eight tracks and visit an Expo Floor with greater than 350 top vendors. Register with Discount Code MPIWK for $200 off Total Access and Conference Passes. Discover more about Interop and register now.

Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of … View Full Bio

More Insights