For restaurant franchisees, especially those with a large network of restaurants under their umbrella, data is one of the most valuable assets for making better decisions and driving operational efficiency. But with so many teams in so many locations, the sheer scale and complexity make data challenging to centralize and leverage consistently.

Bluemont Group is a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee with 85 locations that span seven different states across the nation. They’ve been in operation for over 15 years.

Alicia Battershell, the Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at Bluemont Group, knew that she needed a better, more centralized data infrastructure to give their nationwide franchises better access to the data and insights they needed.

A More Flexible, Accessible Data Infrastructure

The nature of Bluemont Group’s data management strategy before Collectiv was far too removed from the people who needed access to the data.

Alicia and her team had decided to create a data warehouse with another vendor, but it was owned by that vendor. Since Bluemont Group just had credentials to access the system on the front end, they were at the mercy of the vendor whenever they needed any changes.

There were also inefficiencies with the connection between the different systems their data lived in, which caused backups in Sage Intacct, their accounting software.

“If accounting made an entry at the end of the day on Thursday, sometimes we wouldn’t be able to get reports out until Sunday because of the refresh delay and the data issues,” Alicia recalled. “It was ridiculous.”

Microsoft Fabric Was The Clear Solution, But They Needed Guidance

Alicia’s team decided they needed to create their own data infrastructure to house all of their data and have a direct connection to Power BI.

“This data infrastructure would enable us to create personalized dashboards for each of our locations to highlight key business metrics and KPIs,” Alicia said. The goal here was to help managers better communicate with their teams.

With so many Dunkin’ franchise locations, some in operation for many years, they accumulated a lot of historical data but didn’t have a good system to leverage it. All of this data needed to be brought into the system, organized, and plugged into the API to extract the most recent data.

Microsoft Fabric seemed like the solution to all of their data problems. The problem was, as Alicia shared with us: “Fabric was very new and we couldn’t find anyone that had knowledge of it. Some of the companies we spoke to didn’t even know what Fabric was.”

Alicia met the Collectiv team at the MURTEC conference and immediately took notice of their deep knowledge of the Microsoft Fabric technology. “I knew at that moment that Collectiv was the company we wanted to go with.”

With Collectiv’s team of Fabric experts on their side, Bluemont Group was excited to create a highly connected, owned platform for their data that gave them the self-service capabilities and agility they needed. Alicia was also excited about the training knowledge Collectiv could impart to them so her team could feel confident navigating the system for years to come.

Success Rooted in Communication and Collaboration

What stood out the most to the Bluemont Group team was the high level of collaboration. Collectiv actively listened in every conversation, continuously shared their expertise, and quickly sprung to action with any troubleshooting.

“Their professionalism and excellent communication made us feel valued,” Alicia shared. “There was no one point in time where I felt like our project was insignificant.” This was especially valuable to Bluemont Group since they are a smaller company.

The open, honest, and constant communication from the Collectiv team made this implementation stress-free and seamless. “They were quick to respond if something came up. And they resolved any problems within hours, not days or weeks,” Alicia recalls.

This clear communication and quick problem-solving helped Bluemont Group start quickly reaping the benefits of their new Fabric implementation.

Reliable Reporting to Stay on Top of Trends

With Collectiv, Bluemont Group was able to finally create more reliable reporting tools that make it easier for their managers to keep an eye on trends in the business and pull out valuable insights.

The implementation of Fabric was instrumental in making this happen since it allows Bluemont Group to house all data in one single platform that is also connected to Power BI. Now, their data is better organized, easier to analyze, and safer.

Once all of the data was moved into Fabric, Alicia’s previous data problems were eliminated. Alicia and her team no longer had to deal with the delayed refreshes in their accounting platform, Sage Intacct. “Now if accounting makes an entry at the end of the day, we can still do a refresh and have our reports out the same day,” Alicia excitedly told us.

Thanks to Fabric, the Bluemont Group team was also able to better leverage historical information from their 85 Dunkin’ franchises. Collectiv helped to forge a connection between historical data and new data so that their reports could show a clearer, long-term picture.

Because of the deep expertise and the top-notch communication between weekly status reports and timely updates, Alicia and her team accomplished this massive undertaking with more ease than they ever thought possible.

When we asked Alica to describe her biggest win in implementing Fabric with Collectiv’s help, she had a clear answer. “There are two words that I’ve never thought would be in a sentence together—seamless and integration. But in all honesty, this Fabric integration has been seamless.”

Microsoft Fabric is a powerful tool, but it takes an expert to leverage it fully. Collectiv has emerged as an early leader in this technology and is ready to help you tackle any data challenges that Fabric can solve.