Case Study

Thayer Distribution Moves Data 10X Faster with Self-Service Integration

SnapLogic improves operational efficiency, widens profit margins, and paves path for growth

Backstory

Founded in 1978 by Argentinian immigrants, Thayer Distribution is a technology-driven “redistributor” that serves as a bridge between snack manufacturers and wholesale distributors. Thayer makes the entire supply chain leaner and more profitable.

The Challenge

Thayer Distribution is an entrepreneurial success story. In the late 70s, Juan and Maria Gallicchio started selling candy out of their living room shortly after immigrating with their children to the U.S. from Argentina. Through hard work, business savvy, and a good deal of grit, they turned this humble operation into a full-fledged distribution company now serving nearly 1,000 customers in 14 states.

When the second generation of Gallicchios inherited Thayer, they were eager to vault the business into the next growth tier. But razor-thin margins, common in the distribution world, presented hurdles to expansion.

Historically, Thayer negotiated the problem of lean margins by establishing even leaner operations, often adopting cutting-edge technologies for such ends.

With this in mind, Thayer’s chairman of the board Guido Gallicchio examined the company’s operations in hopes of finding new ways to stimulate growth. In doing so, he discovered glaring inefficiencies in some of Thayer’s data management processes.

This was especially true of a process wherein developers transported inventory and customer data between two Oracle databases (one for each of its distribution centers) and a homegrown e-commerce platform. For these operations, the company employed a patchwork of solutions, all of which involved manual, time-intensive labor. Replicating just one table to a database, for instance, consumed gobs of time.

At one point, Thayer purchased an integration solution to cure its data transportation ills, but the product failed to deliver. The company had reached an impasse.

The Solution

Thayer needed a more robust integration solution — something that was simple but powerful, intuitive yet able to tackle complex challenges. It found such qualities in the SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform.

In vetting the platform, Guido realized that assembling data pipelines with SnapLogic’s visual drag-and-drop interface and sophisticated pre-built connectors (Snaps) would be vastly more efficient than doing so through manual programming. But the efficiency gains wouldn’t stop there, he reasoned; the machine learning features embedded in the platform — collectively known as Iris AI — would further accelerate the integration process.

Guido was right.

“SnapLogic has had a profound impact on our data management processes,” declared Thayer’s chairman of the board.

Business Results

Thayer has saved considerable time, money, and resources as a result of using SnapLogic. Out of the gates, these savings have widened the company’s profit margins. But they’ve also blessed the balance sheet by enabling Thayer to take on more business than it could before. It now has the capacity to fulfill a greater number of orders, in turn, driving revenue.

What’s more, Thayer has used SnapLogic to streamline processes directly affecting suppliers and wholesale distributors. This incentivizes partners and customers to transact with the company in the future, providing yet another avenue for growth.

SnapLogic has also had a multiplying effect in terms of spreading operational efficiencies across the organization.

“We had one use case in mind when we purchased SnapLogic,” explained Guido. “In my opinion, if it could do that one thing, it justified the cost. But now, after seeing the results it has produced in just a short time, we’ve realized we can use SnapLogic to accelerate a whole host of other processes we weren’t even thinking of initially.”

Guido concluded, saying: “For decades, we’ve leveraged topflight technologies to grow and improve as a business. Our partnership with SnapLogic builds upon this strategy and is increasingly vital to Thayer’s future.”