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CASE STUDY: FENWICK

By migrating core sales data to Snowflake, Fenwick reduced ongoing platform costs by 40%, delivering immediate ROI and winning executive support.

CLIENT
Fenwick – www.fenwick.co.uk
PROJECT
Migration from legacy SQL data warehouse to Snowflake for faster, scalable, and cost-efficient analytics.
WHAT WE DID

Migrated to Snowflake, modernising their data architecture and unlocking new levels of performance, agility, and insight.
TIMELINE
Proof of Value completed in weeks, full migration delivered smoothly within the project timeframe.

PROJECT INFORMATION

Fenwick, a leading UK luxury retailer with eight stores and an online presence, faced challenges with a legacy Azure SQL data warehouse. Growing data volumes from new PoS systems, Shopify eCommerce, and third-party sources were creating slow performance, high costs, and unstable daily reporting.

The goal was clear - to modernise Fenwick’s data architecture and create a robust, scalable platform capable of delivering trusted, real-time insights to drive smarter decisions.

 

Before Catalyst BI’s involvement, Fenwick experienced:

  • Delayed or failed data loads impacting daily reports

  • Rising Azure compute costs without performance gains

  • Time-intensive manual data preparation

  • Slow financial forecasting processes limiting agility

The Challenge

Over recent years, Fenwick underwent rapid digital transformation, upgrading PoS systems, adopting Shopify for eCommerce, and onboarding more third-party data sources like loyalty platforms and marketing platforms. However, their legacy SQL-based data warehouse became a performance bottleneck, failing to meet business demands:

  • Reporting Delays & Failures: Key daily reports (e.g., sales performance) became unstable.
  • Rising Costs: Azure-based infrastructure couldn't scale efficiently, leading to spiralling operational expenses.
  • Business Bottlenecks: Data teams became blockers, unable to support real-time decision-making or automation needs.
  • Slow Data Loads: Preparing large datasets (e.g., sales, inventory, planning) became time-consuming and unreliable.
The Solution

To overcome these limitations, Fenwick partnered with Catalyst BI to explore modern cloud data solutions. After evaluating multiple options, including BigQuery and Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake emerged as the platform of choice — offering speed, flexibility, and cost efficiency.

Catalyst BI supported the evaluation, migration, and optimisation process, running initial PoV tests that showed:

  • 10x-20x performance gains on data queries
  • Lower operating costs than Azure SQL

Seamless integration with tools like Qlik, Microsoft Power Apps, and Cognos 

The Results

40% Reduction in Operational Expenditure

By migrating core sales data to Snowflake, Fenwick reduced ongoing platform costs by 40%, delivering immediate ROI and winning executive support.

  
10x+ Faster Data Processing

Time-intensive processes, like preparing sales data, now run up to 10x faster using Snowflake’s compute flexibility, even at an extra-small scale.

  
100% Uptime for Reporting

Since implementation, sales and operational reports have achieved 100% reliability, restoring business confidence in data.

  
15-Minute Financial Forecasting

Cognos financial reporting now updates every 15 minutes, instead of overnight, empowering finance teams with real-time budget visibility.

  
Daily Inventory Planning

Auto-replenishment systems that previously failed now integrate seamlessly with Snowflake, supporting daily purchase orders based on sales and stock trends.

  
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“Snowflake has unlocked everything for us. We’ve not just improved reporting — we’ve opened the door to real-time decision-making, automation, and innovation.”

Michael LaverickHead of Data, Fenwick