Keruyun uses AnalyticDB for MySQL in combination with other Alibaba Cloud services such as PolarDB to implement a precision marketing solution that addresses issues such as slow data synchronization, poorly defined customer groups, and reliability issues during business peaks.

Challenges

Keruyun provides ordering and cashier products and services for restaurants, as well as operations. They have grown to be a leader of this market in China. As its business grows, Keruyun has encountered the following challenges:

  • Slow data synchronization: Operational data for each day is available only on the next day. Merchants cannot use the data for decision-making, leading to rushed and sub-optimal resource allocation.
  • Poorly defined customer groups: Merchants want better definition of their customer groups to help identify opportunities for targeted incentives. This includes grouping customers by age, consumption habits, and spending power.
  • System reliability: During business peaks such as New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, Qixi Festival, and Christmas, orders may soar to four times the usual amount. This results in issues in processing speed and in some cases, system failures.

Solution

To tackle the preceding challenges, Alibaba Cloud has developed the following solution for Keruyun.

Description:

  • The solution replaces Hive, HBase, Kylin, and TiDB with AnalyticDB for MySQL for unified data analysis. This ensures that analysis reports are generated in real time. For more information, see What is AnalyticDB for MySQL?
  • Data is synchronized from online transaction processing (OLTP) databases to AnalyticDB for MySQL in real time. Operations reports of merchants are updated every 5 minutes.
  • AnalyticDB for MySQL is used to build a customer tag system that serves as the basis for customer portrait analysis.
  • 23 core databases now use the PolarDB engine. Resources can be scaled up a hundredfold within 5 minutes during business peaks. For more information, see What is PolarDB?

Benefits

The precision marketing solution developed by Alibaba Cloud provides the following benefits for Keruyun:

  • Higher revenue

    Keruyun launched a VIP package that supports hourly updates of operations reports. This package increased Keruyun's monthly revenue by millions of dollars.

  • New services

    Keruyun has started to develop a precision marketing service based on customer portraits. Monthly sales are expected to reach CNY 30 million after this service is released.

  • Better service provision during business peaks

    For example, during the Qixi Festival in 2019, individual orders could be placed within two seconds on average even though the total number of orders was 50% larger than that in the last year. No latency or failures occurred during order placement and checkout.