Achieved a single, deterministic source of truth for all business definitions across the entire organisation
Successfully replatformed website and ERP/WMS systems with zero data breakage, ensuring continuous operational stability
Enabled multiple daily production deployments for data models, increasing agility from a previous weekly cadence
Pet Circle utilised Looker and BigQuery to move from fragmented, conflicting reports to a "trusted time" architecture. By investing heavily in a centralised business layer and robust metadata governance, they have achieved total data consistency and established a scalable foundation for conversational AI and real-time personalisation.
Pet Circle utilised Looker and BigQuery to move from fragmented, conflicting reports to a "trusted time" architecture. By investing heavily in a centralised business layer and robust metadata governance, they have achieved total data consistency and established a scalable foundation for conversational AI and real-time personalisation.
From data silos to a unified "trusted time" architecture
Before partnering with Google Cloud, Pet Circle navigated what Principal Data Architect Hamish Gray describes as the "before times." During this period, the company relied on a homespun ERP system and fragmented reporting tools that led to a significant business challenge: every individual report effectively had its own definition. When different departments presented conflicting numbers for the same core metrics, it created a level of ambiguity that hindered fast, confident decision-making across the leadership team.
As the company prepared for growth and a complete overhaul of its technical stack—including new ERP, WMS, and ecommerce platforms—they recognised the urgent need for a data solution that could serve as a reliable, organisation-wide anchor.
The selection process was driven by the necessity for a single, deterministic source of truth. Pet Circle evaluated other options, but ultimately chose Looker because of its unique, text-based modeling layer, LookML. For Gray, the fact that Looker is deterministic and supports robust version control was the deciding factor. This allowed the data team to define complex business logic once in code and ensure it applied universally, regardless of the end-user's department.
Additionally, as a Google Cloud-native organisation, the tight integration between Looker and BigQuery made it the most sensible choice for a long-term partnership. This alignment ensured that as Pet Circle's data grew to more than 10 terabytes across their data lake and business layers, the infrastructure would scale seamlessly while maintaining the integrity of their "trusted time" architecture. By choosing Looker, Pet Circle prioritised accuracy and consistency over mere visualisation, ensuring they had the right numbers to drive their mission of being Australia's premier pet care provider.
We chose Looker because it is text-based, deterministic, and supports version control. Our team wanted a single place for definitions so that we could define our business logic, metrics, and definitions once and have it always do the same thing. It was about having the right numbers, as that promotes trust and trust leads to better insights.
Hamish Gray
Principal Data Architect, Pet Circle
Scaling governance and innovation with AI-ready metadata
Pet Circle has evolved Looker from a standard BI tool into a comprehensive "full business layer" that serves as the central nervous system for the company's data operations. Central to this strategy is their "dog" (Data Organisation and Governance) system, a sophisticated internal framework designed to eliminate ambiguity. This system automates the injection of rich metadata—including business definitions, column descriptions, and data ownership—directly into BigQuery and Looker.
By treating their data domains, such as product, inventory, and customer, as curated and governed data products, the platform team ensures that every user, from marketing to logistics, interacts with a single version of the truth. This rigorous approach to naming conventions and standards ensures that a "product" or an "order" is identified identically across the entire ecosystem, effectively eliminating the "data sprawl" and conflicting metrics of the past.
This robust metadata foundation has proven vital for Pet Circle's rapid adoption of AI and emerging technologies. By utilising Looker's Model Context Protocol (MCP), Pet Circle integrated conversational analytics through a partner called Handle. Because they had already invested heavily in high-quality metadata within Looker, the AI agents could immediately and accurately identify complex definitions like "product revenue" without the need for manual retraining or custom tuning. Employees across the organisation can now ask natural language questions to find data stewards or run complex analyses on-the-fly, democratising access to insights that previously required technical expertise.
Operationally, the impact of this architecture is immense, particularly regarding the speed and reliability of data delivery. The team utilises Looker Continuous Integration for its CI/CD pipeline, ensuring that every change made to a data model is automatically tested for SQL validity and content integrity before reaching production. This automated "gatekeeper" has eliminated broken reports and given the team the confidence to move from a weekly deployment cadence to multiple updates per day. This agility was put to the test during high-traffic events like Black Friday—Pet Circle's largest ever—where they saw record-breaking sales and Looker usage without a single technical hitch.
The versatility of this Looker-powered stack extends to external collaboration.
Our metadata investment facilitates conversational analytics. Because we've invested in descriptions and definitions in Looker, the AI already knows how to find 'product revenue.' It's all underpinned by the work we did getting the metadata right and automating everything.
Hamish Gray
Principal Data Architect, Pet Circle
Pet Circle can now onboard external data exchanges with partners in just ten hours, a process that previously would have taken weeks of manual coordination. Whether it is sharing insights with suppliers or powering real-time pet personalisation on their ecommerce site, Pet Circle has successfully turned data from a static resource into a dynamic business engine. By focusing on the right numbers over elaborate visualisations and building on a foundation of automated governance, Pet Circle is not just prepared for the future of AI—they are actively defining it for the retail industry.
Pet Circle is Australia's largest online pet retailer, dedicated to helping pet parents pet better through a data-driven, customer-centric ecommerce experience. By combining smart technology with deep customer insight, we make it easy for pet parents to find everything they need, all in one place. Everything they need for their pets through a data-driven, customer-centric ecommerce experience.
Industry: Retail
Location: Australia
Products: Google Cloud, BigQuery, Dataform, Dataflow, Looker
