Customer Story
C.H. Beck New
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Cineplexx: Pioneering the Future of Cinema
with Exasol Data Warehouse and Sphinx IT Consulting
Cineplexx Revolutionizes Cinema Operations with Exasol Data Warehouse
Cineplexx, a leading cinema chain in Austria and Southeast Europe, partnered with Sphinx IT Consulting to modernize their data infrastructure using Exasol Data Warehouse. Across their multinational operations, this transformation enabled:
- real-time operational visibility
- personalized customer experiences
- data-driven decision-making
Key improvements:
- Enhanced scheduling based on local demand patterns
- Optimized staffing levels to match cinema traffic
- Tailored promotions to regional preferences
Cineplexx: Leading Cinema Innovation Across Europe
Location
Austria
Employees
1300+
Industry
Entertainment
Product
Exasol Data Warehouse
Cineplexx, founded in 1993 and based in Vienna, Austria, has grown to become the largest cinema chain in Austria with operations expanding to 12 countries in Southeast Europe. The company‘s business model focuses on delivering a premium, consistent movie-going experience to guests across a network of modern, multi-screen cinemas, including IMAX and VR experiences. With around 500 screens and over 80,000 seats, Cineplexx manages its geographically dispersed network from Vienna while maintaining a local brand presence in each market.
To achieve this balance of centralized management and local relevance, Cineplexx relies on standardized core operational systems like point-of-sale (POS) and film scheduling. They also leverage a loyalty program, mobile app, and website to capture valuable customer data, helping them understand and serve their diverse audience better.
Legacy Data Infrastructure:
A Barrier to Expansion
As Cineplexx embarked on its market expansion, the company‘s existing data infrastructure began to show its limitations, hindering their ability to fully utilize their growing data assets. The legacy solution, based on Vista‘s cinema management system with its inbuilt data warehouse on Microsoft SQL Server, presented several challenges:
- Pre-aggregated data made it difficult for business leaders to understand metric calculations and data lineage
- Users couldn’t easily drill down to detailed transaction-level data or combine metrics in new ways
- Growing data volumes led to performance and scalability issues
These limitations often led to manual data manipulation in Excel, a time-consuming and error-prone process. The legacy system struggled with increasing data complexity, resulting in slow, inflexible reports that didn‘t fully reflect business conditions.
The lack of real-time data hindered quick responses to market changes. Batch-driven refreshes could take hours or days, leaving decision-makers without timely insights. The absence of mobile access further complicated monitoring key metrics on the go.
Consequently, the IT team spent significant time maintaining the fragmented data environment and supporting ad hoc requests, rather than driving innovation.
RED Framework Powers Cineplexx’s Data Modernization
Recognizing the need for change, Cineplexx partnered with Sphinx, an Exasol specialist with deep expertise in data warehousing and BI automation. Sphinx brought a unique asset to the table: their Rapid Enterprise Deployment (RED) automation framework.
RED is a metadata-driven automation layer that accelerates the development of data warehousing projects. It abstracts away much of the technical complexity, allowing for rapid prototyping and iterative delivery of a full data warehouse. Using RED, Sphinx was able to deploy a functional Exasol Data Warehouse for Cineplexx in a matter of weeks, a process that would typically take months.
The implementation included:
- Automated data integration from all Cineplexx’s source systems
- An optimized semantic layer for BI consumption
- A fine-grained security model based on role-based access control
RED’s metadata-driven approach automated the creation of efficient, high-performance data pipelines that continuously extracted data from source systems like POS, loyalty, and mobile app databases. These pipelines were designed to capture and load data incrementally, ensuring that only new or changed data was processed. This approach, combined with RED’s change data capture (CDC) capabilities, allowed Cineplexx to achieve data freshness of up to 15 minutes, a significant improvement over their previous batch-driven approach.
To further enhance data accessibility, Sphinx implemented a REST API layer on top of the Exasol database, providing a flexible, standardized interface for accessing and manipulating data within the Exasol environment. Working closely with Cineplexx, Sphinx designed a scalable star schema model optimized for Cineplexx’s analytics use cases, with the flexibility to easily add new data sources over time. For data visualization and dashboarding, Cineplexx chose MicroStrategy, which Sphinx integrated with the Exasol Data Warehouse, creating an end-to-end analytics solution.
To ensure the new system delivered immediate value while building towards a larger scale enterprise data model, Cineplexx established an agile delivery model for rolling out new analytics applications. Business and IT teams worked collaboratively in short sprints, ensuring that each new dashboard delivered immediate value while also building towards a larger scale enterprise data model.
Enhancing Cinema Operations: Results and Impact
Country-Level Operational Optimization
With near real-time data available in Exasol, Cineplexx now empowers local teams in each country to make data-driven decisions. Country managers use granular, up-to-date insights to optimize their specific markets.
Key improvements:
- Enhanced scheduling based on local demand patterns
- Optimized staffing levels to match cinema traffic
- Tailored promotions to regional preferences
This localized approach has led to some interesting discoveries. For instance, the data revealed that locally produced films significantly outperformed international titles in certain countries:
- In Albania, the two highest-grossing films of 2022 were local productions
- Serbia and Slovenia each had two local films in their respective top five highest-grossing movies of 2022
Real-time Operational Visibility and Agility
The near real-time data pipeline, refreshed every 15 minutes, has given Cineplexx an unprecedented level of operational visibility and agility. Cinema managers now have a live dashboard of key metrics, allowing them to make in-the-moment decisions – even on mobile devices – to optimize performance.
Real-time actions now possible:
- Immediate staffing adjustments for unexpectedly popular showings
- On-the-spot concession promotions to boost sales during slower periods
- Quick reallocation of screens based on real-time ticket sales data
These rapid, data-driven actions have led to measurable improvements in operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Personalized Guest Experiences
By integrating data from their loyalty program, mobile app, website, and POS systems, Cineplexx gains a holistic view of each customer’s preferences and behaviors. This 360-degree customer view enables Cineplexx to tailor every touchpoint of the cinema journey.
Personalization initiatives:
- Customized film recommendations based on individual viewing history
- Targeted promotions aligned with customer preferences
- Dynamic adjustment of concessions and merchandise mix to match local tastes
- Selective offering of premium amenities to high-value customers
This data-driven personalization not only enhances the guest experience but also drives incremental revenue through higher spend per visit and increased repeat visits.
Strategic Planning and Forecasting
Cineplexx’s new data platform also enables more accurate, granular forecasting and strategic planning. By analyzing various data points, Cinepexx can predict future demand at a highly localized level.
Improved strategic decision-making:
- Optimized film booking and scheduling based on predicted demand
- More efficient staffing aligned with anticipated peaks in traffic
- Reduced waste in perishable concessions through better demand forecasting
- Data-driven evaluation of potential new cinema locations and configurations
On a longer-term horizon, Cineplexx can now model the impact of potential business changes, supporting a test-and-learn approach to business model innovation.
Operational Efficiency and Cost Control
The data platform drives significant operational efficiencies and cost savings by enabling close monitoring of theatre operations data.
Areas of improvement:
- Streamlined processes based on data-driven insights
- Reduced waste through better inventory management
- Optimized resource utilization across the cinema network
- Energy savings through data-informed facility management
By leveraging granular data on every aspect of their operations, Cineplexx has been able to identify and capitalize on numerous opportunities for efficiency gains and cost reductions.
Through these transformative results, Cineplexx has not only improved its current operations but has also positioned itself for continued innovation and growth in the dynamic cinema industry landscape.
Looking to the Future
Cineplexx’s data transformation has laid a strong foundation for future innovation. With Exasol and Sphinx, they now have the technical and organizational agility to stay ahead in a dynamic industry.
Looking ahead, Cineplexx is focused on further enriching their data ecosystem by integrating new data sources. Key initiatives include:
- Integrating voucher, gift card, and weather data to better understand customer behavior and predict demand
- Incorporating web analytics data to build an omnichannel view of customers and personalize digital experiences
- Using unified data in Exasol to support machine learning initiatives, including AI-driven film scheduling and real-time personalization of the guest journey
- Expanding to new markets by quickly onboarding new cinema locations onto the data platform
- Selectively exposing data and analytic capabilities to partners via APIs to create new revenue streamsthe guest experience but also drives incremental revenue through higher spend per visit and increased repeat visits.
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