Modern Financial Data Platform in Azure Powers European Restaurant Chain's Digital Transformation
About Company
A leading European fast-casual dining organisation specialising in fresh Italian cuisine across multiple countries. Operating over 150 restaurant locations spanning 32 countries on five continents, this franchise manages complex financial operations through a combination of corporate-owned venues, franchise partnerships, and joint ventures.
Following a strategic restructuring and acquisition by experienced hospitality industry investors, the organisation embarked on an ambitious digital transformation journey to modernise its financial data infrastructure and establish operational excellence across its global restaurant network.
Services and Technology
Challenge
The client faced critical financial data management challenges that hindered decision-making and operational efficiency across their international restaurant portfolio.
Fragmented Data Landscape: Multiple distributed legacy systems created data silos with no single source of truth for financial and operational reporting across 150+ locations in 32 countries
Manual Reporting Processes: The Complete absence of automated reporting capabilities forced finance teams into time-consuming manual data compilation and reconciliation
No Unified Accounting Platform: Lack of centralised accounting system prevented real-time financial visibility and created compliance risks across diverse franchise, joint venture, and corporate-owned operations
Scalability Constraints: Outdated infrastructure couldn't support rapid expansion plans or accommodate new restaurant openings without significant manual effort
Solution
Elitmind engineered a comprehensive cloud-native financial data platform leveraging Microsoft Azure's advanced data services ecosystem to transform the client's financial operations.
Azure SQL Database Implementation: Deployed Azure SQL Database as the centralized relational data warehouse, providing high availability, automatic backups, and enterprise-grade security for critical financial data
Azure Data Factory Orchestration: Built robust ETL pipelines using Azure Data Factory to seamlessly integrate data from external web portals, ERP systems, point-of-sale platforms, and franchise management systems with automated scheduling and monitoring
Azure Data Lake Storage Architecture: Implemented Azure Data Lake Gen2 for scalable storage of structured and unstructured financial data, enabling both historical analysis and real-time reporting capabilities
Power BI Enterprise Reporting: Developed comprehensive Power BI dashboards and automated reports providing real-time visibility into revenue, costs, profitability metrics, and operational KPIs across all locations
Azure Key Vault Security: Integrated Azure Key Vault for secure management of connection strings, API keys, and sensitive credentials, ensuring compliance with financial data protection regulations
Azure Static Web Apps Deployment: Leveraged Azure Static Web Apps for a lightweight, secure report distribution portal with granular permission controls enabling role-based access to financial insights
Hybrid Data Integration: Connected legacy on-premises systems with cloud infrastructure through Azure's hybrid connectivity solutions, ensuring seamless data flow during the transition period
Results
The Modern Azure Financial Data Platform delivered a transformative business impact, establishing the client as a technology-forward leader in hospitality financial management.
Without unified financial data visibility, the organization risked compliance issues, delayed financial closes, suboptimal franchise partner relationships, and an inability to identify underperforming locations or capitalize on growth opportunities.
Business Impact:
Single Source of Truth Established: Consolidated financial data from 150+ locations across 32 countries into a unified Azure-based platform, eliminating data discrepancies and enabling confident decision-making.
Automated Financial Reporting: Replaced manual reporting processes with automated Power BI dashboards that refresh in near real-time, reducing financial close cycles from weeks to days and freeing finance teams for strategic analysis.
Enhanced Financial Control: Implemented a comprehensive controlling and financial management system providing granular visibility into revenue streams, cost centres, and profitability across corporate, franchise, and joint venture operations
Scalable Growth Platform: Azure-native architecture enables rapid onboarding of new restaurant locations, franchise partners, and data sources without infrastructure bottlenecks - supporting an aggressive expansion strategy
Secure Self-Service Analytics: Azure Static Web Apps deployment empowers stakeholders with role-based access to relevant financial insights while maintaining enterprise Security and compliance standards.
Cloud Cost Optimization: Elastic Azure infrastructure scales resources based on demand, eliminating over-provisioning and reducing the total cost of ownership compared to legacy on-premises systems.
Accelerated Decision Velocity: Real-time financial dashboards enable franchise partners and regional managers to identify trends, address issues, and capitalize on opportunities within hours rather than weeks
Tailored for success
"Building a Modern Data Platform in Azure that integrated external sources including web portals and ERP systems required comprehensive cloud architecture expertise. Our team delivered a full digital transformation solution leveraging Azure SQL Database, Azure Data Factory, Data Lake, Power BI, and Key Vault to create a unified controlling and financial system. The implementation of Azure Static Web Apps gave the client complete control over permissions for sharing reports across their organization. This cloud-native platform is designed for rapid scalability, allowing seamless addition of new units and reports as the business grows."
Robert Woźniak CCO & Co-founder of Elitmind
Our Approach
is an Enterprise-grade relational database service providing the foundation for centralized financial data warehousing with built-in high availability, automated backups, and intelligent performance optimization for mission-critical workloads.
is a Cloud-based ETL and data integration service that orchestrates automated data pipelines, seamlessly connecting external web portals and ERP systems to the central data platform with scheduled workflows and monitoring capabilities.
A Scalable, secure data lake storage solution combining the power of a high-performance file system with massive scale, enabling cost-effective storage of both structured and unstructured financial data for comprehensive analytics.
is an Interactive business intelligence platform delivering automated financial dashboards. It reports with real-time data visualization, enabling stakeholders to gain actionable insights into revenue, costs, and operational performance across all locations.
centralised secrets management service that safeguards sensitive credentials, connection strings, and API keys with hardware-level encryption, ensuring compliance and Security for financial data access across the platform.
is a Lightweight, globally distributed hosting service for the report distribution portal, providing fast performance, automatic SSL certificates, and granular role-based access control for secure self-service analytics across the organization.