Founded in 1999, Bidfood is a UK-based food supplier with a depot network of 24 sites around the country. As one of the UK’s leading foodservice providers, Bidfood supplies more than 13,000 products to over 45,000 caterers and businesses.
Bidfood were keen to embrace data science but wanted to understand the opportunities and obstacles before investing in data initiatives. The business was also eager to find out what kind of data projects would best serve their mission-critical objectives. Having built up a substantial technology stack over a few decades, Bidfood wanted a truly objective assessment of their current data science capability.
To help Bidfood get started on their data journey, they engaged us to conduct a Data Science Readiness Assessment. Over the course of a month, our team of expert Data Scientists and our Head of Delivery carefully assessed the food supplier’s technology and processes.
We began by collecting information to develop a deep understanding of Bidfood’s current strategy, system and processes. We arranged workshops interviewing key stakeholders, and gathered documentation, example data sets, and reporting to inform our analysis. The process also included product demonstration sessions, where Bidfood showed us their key technology and software.
Once we had all the information that we needed, we began to analyse our findings. We assessed Bidfood’s strategy, team, quality, and technology against more than 25 metrics detailed in our Intechnica Data Framework. This objective framework is at the heart of each of our Data Science Readiness Reports and is built on years of experience in creating and guiding successful data science applications and functions.
After completing the analysis, we collated a digestible, yet detailed report of our assessment and presented our findings to Bidfood.
From our analysis, we identified six practical improvement opportunities, which would enhance Bidfood’s data science readiness, and improve their chances of successfully implementing data science in their business. The report also included a risk assessment to inform Bidfood of any obstacles that may cause problems on their data science journey.
We placed Bidfood on our Data Science Readiness Scale which indicated the business’ data science capability on a scale from one to ten. This gave Bidfood a realistic view of their current situation and the chance to benchmark themselves against other businesses.
Bidfood was thrilled to have a deep understanding of their data science readiness. The food supplier now had a clear direction and a roadmap to start benefitting from data science.