Chick-fil-A Spark Use Case for Data & Analytics

The Chick-fil-A team will be presenting how the business and IT collaborated to implement Spark for Analytical use cases.

Over the past few years, the concept of a “Data Lake” has become more and more widespread as organizations have seen the importance of centralizing key data assets for applications and analytics. Many companies have been on this journey, but at Chick-fil-A, just a “Data Lake” wasn’t enough, they had to build an ecosystem of tools focused around their core users, Data Engineers and Data Analysts.

So what does this mean? It means that in order to facilitate this process well, there needed to be some drastic changes in how Chick-fil-A thought about and approached data. As data volumes got bigger, there needed to be robust ETL mechanisms to optimize incoming data for “Big Data” transformations. If you are thinking that Apache Spark can fit the bill, you are correct! During this talk we will share:

• Chick-fil-A’s “Why” for starting this journey
• What we hope to achieve
• The highs and the lows of our Spark journey
• Where we are today and where we want to be with Data & Analytics

Presenters:

Korri Jones is a Lead Analyst in Enterprise Analytics at Chick-fil-A Corporate in Atlanta, GA. Prior to his current work at Chick-fil-A, he worked as a Business Analyst and Product trainer for NavMD, Inc, was an Adjunct Professor at Roane State Community College and Instructor for the Project GRAD summer program at Pellissippi State Community College and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Alberto Rama has worked for Chick-fil-A Corporate in Atlanta, GA for 10 years, currently as a Lead Software Engineer in Data & Analytics. Prior to venturing in the Restaurant Industry, he worked in Government, Financial Services and Telecommunications for clients in the U.S.A, Europe, and Latin America.