Albert: From a Local Data Governance Initiative to the Standard for 5,000 Store
Every successful AI initiative is built on something far less visible: trusted data, clear ownership, and shared standards.
countries and brands on one governed platform
months to define a governance roadmap
years of implementation support
Challenge
The Algorithms Are the Easy Part
Personalization, AI-driven forecasting, and omnichannel loyalty programs are now among the top priorities for most retail organizations. Ahold Delhaize, a retail group operating 9,500 stores and serving 77 million customers each week, has made these initiatives a cornerstone of its strategy for 2025–2028.
None of these initiatives, however, can succeed without trusted data, even in organizations with modern data platforms and advanced analytics capabilities. As one Ahold Delhaize executive put it:
“Algorithms are the easy part. The real challenge is building the right data foundation and changing the way people work.”
It is impossible to personalize offers for millions of customers if the same store or product appears under multiple names across different systems. Without trusted data, even the most sophisticated analytical models produce unreliable results. Albert, Ahold Delhaize’s Czech retail brand, already had a robust enterprise data warehouse and an experienced analytics team. What was missing was a systematic approach to ensuring that data would remain complete, consistent, and interpreted the same way across both existing and newly introduced systems.
The situation was further shaped by the rollout of Ahold Delhaize’s global Data Management policy. Data Governance became a mandatory part of enterprise data management, requiring each brand to demonstrate clear data ownership, domain governance, and measurable data quality.
Solution
Governing Data Across Four Countries and Brands
The project began with a three- to four-month assessment of Albert’s data maturity based on the DAMA framework. Adastra evaluated the organization’s approach to data quality, ownership, cataloging, and governance, and delivered a gap analysis, a target operating model, and an implementation roadmap. The outcome was a shared understanding across both business and IT of what “good data” actually means.
The First Step: Customer and Product
Ataccama was selected as the central platform for data governance, the data catalog, and data quality monitoring. The implementation started with the two business domains with the greatest impact: customer and product.
For each domain, the team defined:
- a business glossary;
- data owners;
- data quality rules; and
- automated monitoring.
The goal was to create a single source of truth for both business and technical teams—a “Wikipedia for data.” If a data quality rule is violated—for example, if the name of a loyalty program differs across systems—the platform automatically creates a ServiceNow ticket and assigns it to the responsible team. No manual detection or escalation is required.
Adastra also developed the Ataccama–ServiceNow integration before a standard solution was available. It later became a reference implementation for other brands within the group and even influenced global platform decisions.
Scaling Data Governance Across the Group
As the Data Governance program evolved, Ahold Delhaize began aligning the brands across its Central and South-East Europe (CSE) region through common data standards and governance practices.
To support this expansion, Adastra designed a multi-tenant Ataccama architecture that enabled:
- logical separation of brands and countries,
- consistent governance standards across all tenants,
- scalable deployment across multiple markets.
The architecture later became a blueprint not only for the CSE region, but also for other European parts of the Ahold Delhaize group.
As the program matured, Albert gradually took over the day-to-day operation of Data Governance, while Adastra transitioned into the role of a strategic partner, supporting harmonization and rollout across the group’s brands.
Impact
One Framework, Adopted Across All Regions
Today, Albert’s teams monitor data quality and consistency in real time. As soon as a data issue is detected, the platform automatically identifies it, creates a ServiceNow ticket, and routes it to the responsible team. Where identifying and resolving data issues once required manual analysis across multiple systems and often took several days, the entire process is now automated and managed through defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Key Benefits
- Audit-ready in line with the global Risk Control Framework.
- Automated detection, escalation, and resolution of data quality issues.
- Reference architecture adopted by other regions across the Ahold Delhaize group.
Building the Foundation for AI and Digital Transformation
What began as a local initiative within a single brand has evolved into a repeatable Data Governance model adopted across multiple countries within the Ahold Delhaize group. Today, the organization relies on trusted, governed, and consistent data to power AI-driven forecasting, personalization, and omnichannel loyalty programs.
Adastra continues to support the rollout of the solution across additional countries and brands by leveraging a proven governance framework, domain model, and platform architecture. With these foundations in place, Albert can confidently scale analytics and AI use cases across the organization.
