Tchibo: Brewing up the best possible retail service with Google Cloud
About Tchibo
Tchibo’s unique business model, offering coffee and a range of retail goods that change weekly, has made it a leading retailer in Germany and Europe, with more than 11,000 employees across eight countries.
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About freiheit.com
Since 1999, freiheit.com technologies builds large-scale software platforms for the digital future and helps its international clients to transform their business models into the digital world.
Tchibo uses Google Cloud to power its web store, improving performance and reliability for its customers, while empowering the company to take control of its digital journey.
Google Cloud results
- Keeps customers happy with improved stability, better performance, and faster product searches, even during peak holiday periods
- Reduces costs and simplifies workflows with support from Google Cloud Technical Account Management
- Empowers developers to focus on core business goals with reduced dependencies and agile workflows
Reduces web response times by more than 50%
Coffee is a unique commodity. With global annual revenues in excess of $100 billion, the coffee industry provides the world with a product that is, for many, both luxurious pleasure and essential fuel. Since its founding as a mail order service in Germany in 1949, Tchibo has understood the importance of getting quality roasted coffee beans directly into the hands of customers. And it has continued to innovate to meet its customers’ needs, opening its own coffee shops and brick and mortar retail stores.
Today, Tchibo is known for its unique stores that, alongside coffee, offer a range of non-food items that change weekly, from clothing to household appliances to insurance. Tchibo’s slogan in its native Germany is “Jede Woche eine neue Welt” (Every week, a new world). But the company has expanded well beyond its native city of Hamburg. Tchibo now operates in a dozen countries across Europe and the Middle East and has an annual turnover of more than €3 billion.
In 2020, with online sales becoming increasingly important, Tchibo needed to modernize its web store and improve its performance and stability with a new infrastructure. But this technical challenge also provided an opportunity to modernize the way that the company worked, introducing more agility and empowerment to its workers. To bring this change about, Tchibo turned to Google Cloud.
“We wanted to move our web store to the cloud but, in parallel, we also wanted to change our relationship with our technology and insource as much as possible. Google Cloud helped us bring about not only a technical change but an organizational one as well.”
—Frerk Lätari, Head of Online Technology and Integration, TchiboModernizing the retail experience
Tchibo originally built its web store with an on-premises architecture that was responsible for provisioning and maintaining. As online sales grew over time, the IT infrastructure became increasingly strained, especially during the peak holiday period when servers would struggle to cope with the extra demand.
By 2020, it was time for Tchibo to overhaul its online store and move to the cloud. “When we looked at what we could achieve with cloud computing, we saw that an on-premises infrastructure would leave us lagging behind in performance, availability, and scalability,” says Frerk Lätari, Head of Online Technology and Integration at Tchibo. “It was clear that we had to move to the cloud.”
In addition to gaining a technical edge with a cloud-based infrastructure, Tchibo also saw a strategic advantage in beginning a process of digital transformation for the company overall. The IT team would now have a chance to focus on core business issues instead of worrying about keeping servers going during peak trading periods. After evaluating the leading cloud providers, Tchibo chose Google Cloud.
“We wanted to move our web store to the cloud but, in parallel, we also wanted to change our relationship with our technology and insource as much as possible,” says Frerk. “Google Cloud helped us bring about not only a technical change but an organizational one as well.”
“BigQuery is the core service for our customer and business metrics. It’s ultra fast and easy to use and key for our data scientists and analytics team.
—Frerk Lätari, Head of Online Technology and Integration, TchiboScaling at speed with Google Cloud
Tchibo wanted to migrate to Google Cloud quickly so it would not miss out on any peak trading periods. In order to achieve its goals with minimal disruption, the company opted to participate in the Google Cloud Technical Account Management (TAM) program. This program would give Tchibo enhanced support and help it make the most out of the platform. The company also turned to leading Google Cloud partner and digital transformation specialist freiheit.com. Working closely together, the two came up with a solution tailored to Tchibo’s specific needs.
"We built the Tchibo.de platform over a decade ago with a monolithic core that we were already breaking down into microservices. But the main challenge was the migration of dozens of interfaces to legacy backend systems and the Oracle-to-Cloud SQL migration with zero downtime of the shop," says Stefan Richter, CTO at freiheit.com
Tchibo, determined to minimize any impact on its customer service during the migration, worked on a phased approach with freiheit.com and representatives from the Google Cloud TAM team. The first task was to bring the main web store in Germany over to Google Cloud, using a combination of clusters managed with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Compute Engine virtual machines for scalability at speed.
Once this was done, Tchibo migrated its other web stores to Google Cloud, country by country. At the same time, it moved the customer database to Cloud SQL. Tchibo can now enjoy the scalability and ease of use that comes with a cloud offering, combined with Cloud Key Management for the highest standards of data security.
Based on its work with BigQuery, Tchibo will continue to optimize its business with analytics, on-demand forecasting, and an improved customer experience.
“BigQuery is the core service for our customer and business metrics,” says Frerk. “It’s ultrafast and easy to use, and key for our data scientists and analytics team.”
“With Google Cloud we can provide our users a faster and more reliable online shopping experience than ever. But we have also improved agility, upskilled our teams, and increased our technical competence. It means that we now have control of our technology in a way that we never had before.”
—Frerk Lätari, Head of Online Technology and Integration, TchiboImproved customer service and agile workflows with Google Cloud
Since the migration, Tchibo’s web store (powered by Google Cloud) can now scale quickly and efficiently to ensure a high standard of service for its customers, particularly during peak trading periods. This is made possible with GKE and Compute Engine.
“Our web response time has been reduced by more than half, from around 1.1 seconds to around 0.5 seconds.” says Frerk. The new infrastructure has improved product search times by 75%, meaning that customers can find what they need faster.
Working with a Google Cloud TAM team has helped Tchibo save both time and money by streamlining the on-boarding process. It has made the best use of cost optimizations, such as continued-use discounts, and received expert advice on best practices with cloud computing. With the help of Google Cloud, Tchibo has made its IT team not only more productive but also more proactive, empowering developers to build and run their own products. Without the need to provision on-premises servers, developers can now focus on adding value to the core business instead of maintaining operations.
“With Google Cloud, we can provide our users a faster and more reliable online shopping experience than ever,” says Frerk. “But we have also improved agility, upskilled our teams, and increased our technical competence. It means that we now have control of our technology in a way that we never had before.”
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Tchibo
Tchibo’s unique business model, offering coffee and a range of retail goods that change weekly, has made it a leading retailer in Germany and Europe, with more than 11,000 employees across eight countries.
About freiheit.com
Since 1999, freiheit.com technologies builds large-scale software platforms for the digital future and helps its international clients to transform their business models into the digital world.