Modernizing data architecture is essential for a company's growth. Smile and Altavia join forces to share their successful experience with you.
In a world increasingly aware of the importance of data, the ability to manage and leverage it effectively is crucial for all business functions. Édouard Dufaud and Jamel Ben Amar recently highlighted the significance of a Data Factory for a data-centric company, using the concrete example of its deployment at Altavia. Édouard Dufaud, Head of Data at Altavia, and Jamel Ben Amar, Group CTO at Smile, shared their experience and insights during a conference at the Big Data & AI event in Paris.
The importance of data at Altavia
Founded in 1983, Altavia is a global marketing services company that supports retailers, including major cosmetic brands and other industries. With a presence in 45 countries across 4 continents, the company employs approximately 2,800 people and manages around 70 entities. Altavia’s core mission is to cover the entire marketing value chain, from campaign conception to execution at the point of sale.
The marketing services sector, historically characterized by a strong presence of POS (Point of Sale) printing, has been undergoing a digital transformation in recent years to meet the new challenges of digital marketing. This transformation includes the implementation of a new suite of project management, finance, and procurement tools, as well as new ambitions in data exploitation.
A new Data Factory to support Altavia's transformation
To support this transformation, Altavia has structured its data organization around three main pillars:
- Data Management Governance: Establishing common standards through the implementation of Master Data Management (MDM), understanding the ecosystem to target the right data at the right place, and monitoring data quality to ensure interoperability.
- Data Consumption and Exposure: Data must be accessible to various internal and external clients. This enables Altavia to leverage predictive and generative models with consolidated datasets and expose them for internal use by applying a business intelligence layer.
- Data Architecture: A modern and user-friendly data architecture is essential to support the first two pillars. This is where the Data Factory comes into play, serving as the core engine of this transformation.
An agile and open Data Factory: Altavia's strategic choice with Smile
To build this Data Factory, Altavia launched a call for tenders and chose to collaborate with Smile, convinced by their technical vision to address Altavia’s technical and business challenges. Particular attention was given to the technology stack, which needed to operate not only on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) but also leverage Open Source solutions to avoid cloud lock-in and enable portability across other infrastructures.
Technical details of the Data Factory
Altavia’s Data Factory is built on several key technical components:
- Data Ingestion: The use of Pub/Sub, Apache Beam, and Spark enables efficient data ingestion and transformation.
- Data Storage: BigQuery is used for structured data storage, while Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is utilized for flat file storage.
- Orchestration: Apache Airflow is implemented for workflow execution and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) management, providing a clear overview of executed tasks, errors, and upcoming processes.
- Monitoring: Probes are deployed to standardize messages and track workflow execution, helping to manage the increasing complexity of data flows.
- Security: The use of M and KMS ensures data governance and security, meeting Altavia’s strict security requirements.
- Data Visualization: Tools like Qlik and Power BI are used to expose consolidated data, enabling in-depth analysis.
Altavia and its Data Factory : a strategic success for the future
The implementation of the Data Factory enables Altavia to efficiently manage data transformation for both internal and external projects while ensuring strict governance and continuous monitoring. With this modern and flexible infrastructure, Altavia is now better equipped to tackle the marketing challenges of tomorrow, transforming raw data into actionable insights for informed strategic decision-making.
This Data Factory project highlights the critical role of data integration and management in a modern business environment. It demonstrates how a structured and well-designed approach can transform the way a company leverages its data to create value and drive strategic growth.
Are you looking to develop a Data Factory for your organization and need a trusted partner to support this transformation? Contact us, and our experts will guide you through the journey!
Interested in this topic? For a deeper dive, we recommend watching the replay and reading Jamel Ben Amar’s article on choosing the right data quality solution in 2025.
