Fressnapf data governance success story
How Fressnapf built data governance that grows with 2,800 stores
Europe’s largest pet supplies retailer needed to trust its data before it could scale on it. Here’s how Fressnapf Maxi Zoo partnered with Infoverity, on Informatica’s IDMC platform, to make data governance something business teams pull toward — not something IT pushes on them.
Governance that grows the way your business actually works: Fressnapf didn’t succeed by mandating a tool — they succeeded by finding the people already doing the work and building from there. If that sounds like the gap in your own data strategy, let’s talk about what a non-invasive start could look like for you. Book a 30-minute call with the team that made Fressnapf success possible.
Governing data across 2,800 stores and 15 countries
Fressnapf Maxi Zoo, founded in 1990, is one of Europe’s largest pet supplies retailers — now operating 2,800+ stores across 15 countries, serving around 12 million customers with the support of 20,000 shop-floor employees, and reaching close to 18% market share in 2024.
Fressnapf’s Data Analytics team, kept separate from IT, ran into the same wall again and again: with no solid documentation to point to. They were constantly explaining how KPIs were calculated, where the numbers came from, and why figures diverged from each other.
Undocumented KPI logic made lineage nearly impossible to trace. Source-system changes in SAP reached the analytics team only after reports had already broken. Master data quality was a universal, hard-to-quantify complaint. And a new data warehouse build meant GDPR policy had to be enforced at the field and table level, not just documented somewhere in a binder.
Fressnapf’s original plan — solve all of data governance at once — collided with a mid-project reorganization They needed a platform that could bring transparency to KPI lineage and let them enforce GDPR policy directly at the field level, capabilities they found in Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC).
Getting there required close coordination with IT, connecting IDMC to source systems like SAP so the team could retrieve both data and metadata, the technical backbone that made lineage visibility possible in the first place. Instead of mandating adoption, the team found the people already doing informal data-quality work and built pilots with them, visible enough that other departments started asking to be included, rather than needing to be convinced.
Field-level governance
GDPR deletion & handling policies attached directly to source fields and tables — not tracked separately.
Non-invasive rollout
Align platform rollout with similar activities to maximize overlap to not overwhelm teams with the platform all at once.
Business-led pull
Departments now request governance support rather than needing to be convinced to participate.
Delivering measurable business benefits
- Business teams request governance now, rather than resisting it — the pull effect Fressnapf aimed for since the reorg is playing out in the departments that saw the early pilots.
- Make GDPR policy actionable, not aspirational: enforce it directly where personal data lives — at the field and table level
- A working technical/business split gives teams a shared language for KPIs, without every conversation reverting to “which system is this from.”
- Separating the technical layer, systems, tables, fields, from the business layer, KPI definitions and what they mean, keeps business teams focused on what a metric means rather than its technical origin.
- An advisory relationship that flexed with the project — when the original scope stopped fitting Fressnapf’s reality, Infoverity restructured the engagement around what would actually get adopted.
Beyond the tool: where Fressnapf goes next
Fressnapf’s next phase isn’t about pushing governance harder — it’s about letting the pull effect keep working. As more departments see what the early pilots delivered, the team expects demand to keep outpacing capacity.
Governance that grows the way your business actually works
Fressnapf didn’t succeed by mandating a tool — they succeeded by finding the people already doing the work and building from there. If that sounds like the gap in your own data strategy, let’s talk about what a non-invasive start could look like for you.
