Target has migrated its Demand Chain Management (DCM) architecture to Teradata Vantage in the cloud delivered as-a-service on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

DCM is a solution suite that employs customer demand data to help Target develop accurate daily or weekly sales forecasts to ensure in-store and online inventory are available to meet customer needs.

Continuing its relationship with Teradata, Target selected Vantage for its enterprise scale and performance in the cloud, flexible deployment options for multi-cloud environments, and suite of analytical and data management capabilities.

With AWS, Target has improved its digital presence with a faster and more resilient ecommerce platform at 90% lower infrastructure costs, while improving the checkout experience by updating online store inventory in-real time.

With Amazon DynamoDB, a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for applications of any scale, Target now updates inventory lists and product availability on its website easily and at scale.

Using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), which provides flexibility to start, run, and scale Kubernetes container applications in the cloud, Target accelerated the deployment of new online store features from two months to one day.

In addition, Target was able to launch a new search function that makes it easier to find products on the site and provide additional relevant product recommendation. Using Amazon Redshift, a cloud data warehouse, and AWS Glue, a serverless data integration service, Target built a data platform that analyses consumer insights to tailor product promotions and personalise the shopping experience.

Target Australia general manager for technology, Samantha McIntyre said, “As part of our ongoing work to modernise our DCM technology stack, we knew we had to leverage the cloud for our data analytics platform.”

She added: “We recognised that we needed the latest analytics innovation to help us understand demand and supply chain performance, accurately predict consumer demand, and align inventory exceptions at the most granular level of store SKU, and to aggregate views across our entire business.”

Teradata executive vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan, Keith Budge said, “We are excited to continue our long-standing relationship with Target and migrate their workloads to Vantage in the cloud on AWS.

“Identifying areas of focus within demand planning and supply chain management were key drivers for Target and the Vantage multi-cloud environment will allow Target to extract more from its data assets to optimally serve the business, drive operational excellence and to take a more data-driven approach for improved decision making.”

In 2019, Target launched a company-wide AWS Skills Guild, a comprehensive skills enablement program to build cloud fluency. Since then, all Target technical employees have achieved an AWS Certification. Technical teams, executive assistants, store managers, finance teams, inventory staff, and executives undertook training and earned AWS Certifications to validate their cloud knowledge.

AWS Australia managing director, Rianne van Veldhuizen added, “By building speed, resilience, and scalability into their operations, Target is innovating to meet the growing demand for online shopping and create a thriving ecommerce environment.

“Using the unmatched capabilities of AWS and equipping employees with the skills required to drive the company’s digital transformation, Target is successfully making the digital channel its flagship store. We are excited to help them with this new phase of their digital transformation.”