Confluent Enables Agility and Helps You Drives Savings as Markets Shift

Businesses need to be able to respond quickly to macroeconomic uncertainty and changing market conditions, whether those are caused by trade disputes, public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, or simply abrupt changes in consumer demand.

Amid that swirl of disruptions, technology leaders are also being pressured by management and investors to optimize their businesses and drive as much efficiency as possible. Meanwhile, the fundamental ingredients that tech executives need to be both agile and efficient––the data their businesses collect and generate––are often siloed and processed in batches.

That way of approaching data can leave companies flat-footed, with their insights and actions lagging as markets and consumer behavior change. In today’s dynamic, unpredictable market, organizations need to be able to adapt in real time. And by getting faster insights into how their business is operating, they can introduce efficiencies and optimizations that save money.

Confluent helps companies be real-time businesses, and takes an approach that shifts the processing, analyzing, and governance of data closer to where and when it’s generated. Companies that have used Confluent’s data streaming platform (DSP) have used this model to respond quickly to upticks in demand and changing market conditions, and to increase their return on investment.

Rapidly Respond to Changes in Market Demand With Real-Time Data Streaming

Swiggy, India’s pioneering, on-demand, delivery convenience service, has delivered three billion orders in 680 cities across India, as of 2024.

Swiggy uses the Confluent cluster for real-time predictions, recommendations, and analytics. This allowed the company to tackle a key challenge—managing asynchronous communications across the various services it offers. For example, when a customer opens the Swiggy app, the Confluent cluster powers the predicted SLA, providing an estimated delivery time to the customer. Swiggy can deliver real-time and accurate information to its customers, critical in a delivery service business.

During peak festival periods in India when demand surges, Swiggy relies on Confluent’s elastic scaling to ensure uninterrupted and seamless service for its customers. The data team can simply specify their capacity needs, and the platform handles the rest.

In the past, the data team had to manage all of this manually. Now, they can achieve the same results with just one click. "Business is inherently unpredictable, but the elasticity provided by Confluent enables us to adapt and execute on our future business roadmap with confidence,” says Akash Agarwal, Data Architect at Swiggy.

And if consumer demand for meals and convenience store items can be fickle, imagine trying to work around the weather. But that’s what Sencrop does as the go-to provider of real-time weather data for farmers across Europe.

Sencrop has a network of over 35,000 Internet of Things (IoT) weather stations across Europe, giving farmers access to real-time data on rainfall, temperature, humidity, and wind—all of which help them to better manage their business day to day.

Sencrop uses data from its IoT devices in the field, along with around 20 different forecast models and datasets, to provide weather information. By working with Confluent, the company has been able to decouple data ingestion, processing, and storage. This has been critical as its data sources and complexity have increased.

With data streamed through Confluent’s DSP, the Sencrop platform delivers insights that are accurate to the precise field location and moment so that farmers know if weather is changing and can make important decisions around that information.

In Europe, there are strict guidelines about when crop spraying can occur. Confluent helps Sencrop’s farmers reduce their risks and maximize their productivity—and crop yields—with less effort and fewer mistakes. And by using machine learning (ML) models, the company is better equipped to identify anomalies such as device issues, ensuring that data is complete, accurate, and up to date.

“Real-time data is very important to farmers, first because their work is becoming more and more digitized and more and more complex,” says Mathieu Despriee, Chief Technology Officer at Sencrop.

Use Real-Time Insights to Optimize Your Business for Savings

Confluent’s data streaming platform doesn’t just give businesses the agility to respond to changing market conditions. It enables true business optimizations and savings.

Citizens Bank, a financial services company with over $215 billion in assets, faced the challenge of transforming its legacy systems to meet the demands of digital-first customers. Streaming actionable insights in real time has been a strategic goal for Citizens Bank for three years, according to Sudakar Gopal, Executive VP and Head of Engineering.

Confluent’s full-service solution has allowed Citizens Bank to integrate its disparate legacy systems from the mainframe into a unified, event-driven architecture via the cloud. Gopal shared that Confluent has made it easy for the bank to exchange data across platforms.

One of the most immediate outcomes was the improvement in customer experience. Citizens Bank saw a 20% increase in customer engagement due to real-time data insights. Customers experienced faster transaction processing, more accurate account information, and improved digital banking services.

Processes that previously relied on batch data processing, which could cause delays and inaccuracies, were replaced by real-time streaming, reducing latency and errors. The efficiency translated into a 30% reduction of IT costs and 50% improvement in data processing speeds from cloud adoption.

Additionally, the bank's ability to respond to regulatory requirements improved. Real-time data access allowed for quicker compliance reporting and more accurate tracking of financial activities. The company saw a 15% reduction in false positives in fraud detection, saving approximately $1.2 million annually. This ensured that Citizens Bank could meet both internal and external compliance standards, reducing the risk of costly penalties.

Banks aren’t the only beneficiaries of Confluent’s ability to optimize business operations. GEP Worldwide, an AI-first organization specializing in supply chain and procurement solutions, depends on real-time data to power its operations. In the past, the company relied on quarterly batch processing, which delayed reporting and decision-making for its customers.

“For a supply-chain company like GEP, offering insights with a day-long delay isn’t an option. Many decisions need to be made quickly to ensure on-time data delivery,” said Nithin Prasad, Senior Engineering Manager at GEP.

With Confluent’s multi-cloud support, GEP integrated real-time data from multiple systems, including SQL database, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch, directly into their AI stack. These real-time data streams enabled GEP to predict outages 30 minutes in advance—a 1,400% improvement over their previous two-minute lead time.

This proactive approach to outage prevention was key to minimizing downtime and enhancing clients’ access to data, boosting GEP’s customer satisfaction scores.

By adopting Confluent’s fully-managed data streaming platform, GEP reduced both maintenance time and costs. Automating tasks like infrastructure monitoring also allowed GEP’s teams to focus on building new features, leading to optimized resource allocation.

Unlock the Value of Your Data

Customers all over the world have discovered the benefits of real-time data streaming and Confluent’s DSP approach. Digital services companies, logistics firms, banks, and more have all been able to increase the velocity and agility of their businesses and drive operational efficiencies and savings.

When you're ready to kick off your data-driven journey, see how Confluent can help you accelerate your transformation of data into new customer experiences.