Case Study: Largest Food and Drug Retailing Company achieves inventory validation in under 30 minutes and ensures data integrity during system conversions with Arbutus Software

Largest Food and Drug Retailing Company - Customer Case Study

Largest Food and Drug Retailing Company, a US retailer with over $25B in revenue and 2,000+ stores, faced a major data integrity challenge as it converted systems across 6+ distribution centers. Management and internal audit needed to validate inventory and costing records—an average of 1.5 million inventory records per center—pulling supplemental data from disparate systems while avoiding errors that could impact the company’s bottom line. They engaged Arbutus Software and its Arbutus Analyzer/Arbutus Analytics capabilities to address this risk.

Arbutus Software developed and implemented a suite of analytic procedures and scripts, using Arbutus Analyzer to join, summarize, cross-tab and run SQL against systems such as Lawson and SSIMS to process massive tables. The solution produced exception lists (about 10 anomalies on average), automated repeatable testing, and delivered dramatic efficiency gains—reducing testing time from several days to under 30 minutes—while preserving a read-only audit trail and scalable reporting for trend and comparative analyses.