The ALDO Group is a world-leading creator and operator of footwear and accessory brands with 3,000 points of sale in over 100 countries around the world. Become consumer obsessed: that was the challenge presented to Zaher Hazim and the rest of the leadership team at the ALDO Group. ALDO recognized that the millennial generation, which drives much of the company’s sales, represents a new kind of consumer. Millennials don’t just want good consumer service, they demand a different kind of consumer experience—interacting not only in stores and e-commerce sites, but also through social media and other channels.

ALDO turned to the cloud and chose a cloud data lake based on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Talend Real-Time Big Data. With AWS and Talend, ALDO data scientists are now able to build models and algorithms that can improve the consumer experience across all channels. Talend helps leverage SageMaker from Amazon to give ALDO this AI platform and build machine learning on top.