Hallmark cuts TCO by up to 60 percent after analytics overhaul

Hallmark has reported significant operational and financial benefits following a comprehensive overhaul of its enterprise analytics systems in partnership with Xoriant.

The collaboration between Hallmark and Xoriant has resulted in a total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction of between 55 and 60 percent after modernising the company's analytics landscape and enabling cloud-based solutions.

Migration and modernisation

Faced with rising data volumes and evolving user expectations, Hallmark aimed to realign its analytics infrastructure to meet the requirements of a software-defined business. Xoriant guided the process, which included a migration from legacy reporting systems to a new, cloud-native analytics ecosystem using Power BI and Tableau.

The migration was completed rapidly, with 180 reports transferred to the new platform within seven weeks. This move also saw the integration of artificial intelligence and real-time data into Hallmark's daily business operations. The transition facilitated more agile and data-driven decision-making processes and provided secure, scalable analytics capabilities to the business.

Cloud-first approach

The engagement began with an initial discovery and planning phase using Xoriant's proprietary Data Xplorer tool. This assessed and scoped the migration from Hallmark's on-premise MicroStrategy servers and highlighted opportunities for optimising extensive datasets for real-time analytics. In addition, the project delivered new transaction dashboards and constructed a secure, composable analytics architecture aligned with Hallmark's long-term technology goals.

"Xoriant's exceptional agility and deep expertise have been instrumental in helping us transition to a modern, performance-oriented Power BI environment. Completing the migration of 180 reports in just 7 weeks, while ensuring high quality and user acceptance, reflects the strength of our collaboration. Xoriant's Data Xplorer tool, coupled with their seamless execution, has enabled us to move forward with confidence - laying the foundation for a future where data and AI can drive continuous improvement and innovation across our organization," Gopal Dhandapani, Director – Data Engineering at Hallmark said.

The new analytics environment is designed to provide agility and scalability, supporting Hallmark's vision of a future-ready business model. By moving major business functions - including product assortment planning, customer personalisation, and inventory optimisation - onto the upgraded platform, the company has embedded data and intelligence more deeply into its decision-making processes.

Operational impact

Several business outcomes have resulted from the engagement: a 55 to 60 percent reduction in TCO, enhanced speed-to-insight through real-time dashboards, a scalable foundation for predictive analytics, and more streamlined operations with fewer manual interventions and reduced IT dependency.

The transformation has produced a unified data platform, moved legacy data warehouses to a cloud-native architecture, and enabled the operational use of AI in multiple business domains. As part of these changes, reporting capabilities are now accessible across Hallmark's global teams, which are expected to support more informed and timely decisions.

"Hallmark's transformation is a powerful example of how forward-looking enterprises are moving beyond legacy reporting tools to embracing modern, software-defined analytics ecosystems. At Xoriant, this is core to our mission - to help businesses reimagine their data landscape by combining platform engineering, AI, and insights to drive intelligent decision-making and growth. With decades of specialist experience, we enable our clients to modernize and create measurable impact – towards what we refer to as becoming software defined businesses," Mukund Rao, President of Global Markets at Xoriant, commented.

Strategic direction

The initiative forms part of Hallmark's wider objective to become a software-defined business, where software, analytics and intelligence form the basis of operational and strategic decisions. This approach underscores an ideology that places data at the centre of how products are built, services are delivered, and value is created across the organisation.

Hallmark's approach reflects a broader trend within enterprise technology, where businesses are moving from measuring performance through traditional reporting toward actively shaping growth through real-time, AI-enabled insight.