92%
faster data integration
Automated
order-to-cash process
Three
data tools consolidated
To keep pace with e-commerce and acquisitions growth, Petmate tapped Informatica to unify its complex data management landscape. The new platform enables faster cloud data integration between its Snowflake data warehouse and IT and OT assets, while consolidating overhead costs under a flexible, all-in-one license.
Speaker 1
I came to Petmate to help get a ball in a dog's mouth and we use data to do that. Everything we do is ultimately to enrich the lives of pets and their people. They do launchers, tennis balls, a lot of feeding and watering, so that's food bowls, gravity feeders, time feeders. The modern CIO or modern CTO has to manage a budget. Our data strategy had a fundamental requirement in it that we achieve a certain EBITDA outcome and my cost center, my department, my budget, my forecast pervaded into every decision we were making. The reality is you get very few opportunities to invest right and multipurpose scalability of data management these days has so many different facets that go beyond enterprise reporting. Informatica was able to check that box inherently [by] having the provider ecosystem that they have. Having the IPU licensing model was a rapid enabler.
It's led us [to] innovate with other tools within Informatica's portfolio. We used mass ingestion for the first time to cut absolute critical workload from four minutes to twenty seconds just because the IPU model gave us the freedom to go try mass ingestion. Informatica for us is the trusted, comprehensive platform that we're using, not just for data. We're using it in order to unlock [the] value of that data. Snowflake and Informatica for us has been a great combination. Very quickly and very organically, Snowflake went from [a] highly intellectual science location for data science projects to an actual warehouse where we were dropping data that we were using day in, day out to make real decisions. Informatica is continuously investing in and staying on the forefront of what is out there, what is coming and making sure that you are ready to leverage innovation with your data. What Informatica is doing with AI right now, I really believe, is going to first maintain the confidence of teams out there everywhere. And when they are confident in the innovation, they won't fear the change. They'll be able to build that confidence through things like CLAIRE copilot [that] are going to be faster [in] bringing the value of those innovations into their organizations. AI is going to be easier than we think it's going to be because Informatica is already so much further ahead about getting us there than we even think we need to be.
"As a modern CIO, you get very few opportunities to invest correctly. Informatica checked that box of having the provider ecosystem and new licensing model, which was a rapid enabler of giving me control over my financial destiny."
Improving the lives of people and pets with data
For over 60 years, Petmate has prided itself on providing the highest-quality pet products and supplies. The company’s journey began in 1959 when its founder’s neighbor wanted to bring his dog on trips – leading to the creation of the Sky Kennel. Today, the Arlington, Texas-based manufacturer operates over 20 beloved pet brands and labels (such as Chuckit!® and Healthy Chews™) spanning tens of thousands of products from toys and tennis balls to feeding bowls and pet strollers. “I came to Petmate to help get a ball in a dog’s mouth and we use data to do that,” says Justin Glatz, Chief Information Officer at Petmate. “Ultimately, everything we do is to enrich the lives of pets and their people.”
When Glatz joined the company in 2022, he inherited a complex data and analytics landscape resulting from years of e-commerce growth and mergers and acquisitions. While the team had a strong environment of enterprise data tools and technologies, they were struggling to bring it all together.
"The data strategy we needed to employ was largely around the platforms we were going to use to quickly accomplish a single source of truth," he says.
At the same time, Petmate's leadership tasked the CIO office to manage spend against EBITA targets similar to departments like sales or customer success. Glatz needed to be especially confident and intentional about any major bets on new technology. Still, he saw an untapped opportunity to unify the company’s data assets and drive more efficient decision-making across the business.
“Informatica helps us completely automate the process from order to cash, fulfillment to accounting. Right away, we saw huge increases in efficiency – ELT processing time for jobs in Oracle or Snowflake cut in half – giving users more time to work on analytics.”
Herding data into one trusted source of truth
To tackle these challenges, Petmate needed a comprehensive data management platform that could handle the new data-everywhere paradigm. In recent years, e-commerce sales have outpaced traditional retail stores requiring Petmate to re-platform its website to support greater order volumes and a modern user experience. Both internal and external stakeholders were demanding faster connections between the company’s primary databases – Oracle EBS for day-to-day transactions and Snowflake for business intelligence and analytics.
"One of the unique challenges of these shifts is the need for more technology in order to do business," Glatz explains. "Retail buyers now have detailed supplier requirements from advanced shipping notifications to content curation inside of their own websites and we have a vested interest in supporting those capabilities."
Petmate also had to bridge the gap between its IT assets and operational technology (OT) data coming from physical devices and processes at its industrial plants.
“As a manufacturer, we run factories in Texas that recycle plastic into things like pet kennels and water bowls," Glatz explains. "Recent OT advancements have started to converge with IT-like systems and a lot of the decisions that we make ripple through the supply chain.”
In evaluating potential vendors, the platform approach of Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) stood out as an ideal solution. “As a modern CIO or CTO, you get very few opportunities to invest correctly,” says Glatz. "Informatica was able to check that box of having the provider ecosystem and new licensing model, which was a rapid enabler of giving me control over my financial destiny."
Informatica’s extensive library of cloud connectors also meant Petmate could finally get a holistic view of its data assets. "Informatica let us unlock data from places that all these other tools, when applied and reapplied many times, couldn't get to," Glatz says.
Timeline of Petmate’s company history and acquisitions
Cutting costs and speeding up workloads
With IDMC, the Petmate team saw immediate gains in its data management efficiency. Using Cloud Data Integration, the team seamlessly automated workflow mappings across domains and data sources. Previously, even the company’s Snowflake instance had largely been a data science workspace with teams lacking the time to learn how to leverage the scalable data store. “When we bought Informatica, suddenly it was drag-and-drop and easy as an ETL mapping to get data into and out of Snowflake,” explains Glatz. “Very quickly and organically, it transformed into an actual data warehouse to manage data daily and make real decisions.”
With improved data pipelines, Petmate re-platformed its e-commerce operation. Before the shift, data engineers often had to manually reprocess orders or explore other manual workarounds to get the timely data that teams needed. Now, Informatica CDI takes orders directly into Oracle EBS to support daily transactions while simultaneously writing real-time data to the Snowflake data warehouse, so insights are accessible to business users.
Cloud Application Integration further connects data streams with Shopify to update production information and Amazon’s Transportation Services API to manage order shipments.
“Informatica helps us completely automate the process from order to cash, fulfillment to accounting,” says Jacob Parks, data scientist at Petmate. “Right away, we saw huge increases in efficiency – ELT processing time for jobs in Oracle or Snowflake cut in half – giving users more time to work on analytics.”
The new platform also helps Petmate modernize its data architecture and migrate legacy workloads. Many inherited SQL jobs were created piecemeal to manage critical new business functions but still lived within brittle, time-locked architectures. “With Informatica and Snowflake, we can migrate all our great data engineering work into a more sustainable technology platform,” explains Glatz. The no/low-code approach of IDMC means that new-hire specialists can get up to speed quickly on even the company’s most complex data transformations.
Throughout this journey, Informatica’s flexible IPU license has paved the way to incremental value creation. The all-in-one model uses consumption-based pricing for access to a suite of data management products, enabling Glatz to efficiently manage costs and gradually scale into new use cases and capacity. His team can innovate without additional sales cycles or procurement delays. Glatz recalls an early win from the team: “We used Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication (formerly known as Cloud Mass Ingestion) to cut a critical workload from four minutes to 20 seconds, just because the IPU model gave us the freedom to try it."
With the IDMC platform, Petmate has consolidated multiple data management tools and realized significant IT licensing cost savings. The team is also surpassing its IT mandates with ever-greater efficiency in data processing and delivery. As Parks notes: “Informatica helps us get more data to more end users faster and more efficiently than ever, while shrinking the gap between consumers and experts.”
Unleashing the full potential of data and AI
Looking ahead, Petmate is excited about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), with security as a top priority for new AI use cases. "Security is by far our greatest concern when it comes to AI," Glatz notes. "Informatica helps ensure we have our data platform ready for when it is time to use AI for the right things."
Of particular interest is Informatica CLAIRE as an AI copilot. Glatz believes it will be a game-changer, accelerating his team’s ability to use, transform, qualify and curate trusted data. “CLAIRE AI copilot will bring a crowdsourced expertise and rapid acceleration of development that used to only be available through a cadre of consulting firms,” explains Glatz. Rather than waiting months, or even years, to get multiple points of view, CLAIRE will “give us access to all of that thinking globally, instantly.”
This shift in perspective and capabilities is crucial for Petmate's IT team to meet the evolving demands of e-commerce. By investing in a robust, future-proof data management platform, Petmate is better equipped to handle the challenges of digital transformation, changing consumer behaviors and the increasing convergence of IT and OT data.
As Glatz concludes, "AI will be easier than we think because Informatica is already so much further ahead in getting us there than we can imagine. When the time comes for us to bring innovation and value into the business, having chosen Informatica long ago makes it the right choice today for AI."
With Informatica IDMC as its data foundation, Petmate is well-positioned to fetch success in the rapidly growing market of pet products and services, ensuring that it gets more balls, toys and treats in pets’ mouths for years to come.
Inside the solution
Intelligent Data Management Cloud
Cloud Data Integration
Cloud Application Integration
Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication
Oracle
Snowflake
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