SuperOpa boosts efficiency in its distribution center by migrating to OCI

SuperOpa is an online marketplace offering surplus food and household products at heavily discounted prices. The platform allows stores, bakeries, cafes, restaurants, grocery stores, and supermarkets to post their surplus inventory and almost-expired foods directly to consumers. The business’s aim is to promote sustainable retail and eliminate unnecessary food waste by bringing quality consumer goods and products to people most in need. Customers can purchase products from the website or via smartphone applications for Android and iOS, with up to a 70% discount.

When SuperOpa opened its distribution center it also pivoted its operational model to support its growth and increase logistical efficiencies. Because it facilitates product sales with a wide range of suppliers, SuperOpa’s logistics requirements are more complex than a traditional retailer’s. As such, the company needed to deploy an enterprise resource planning system and a warehouse management system with low latency in the cloud, along with a virtual private network that connected to its mobile and web applications to keep client data protected, per the requirements of  Brazilian data protection legislation. SuperOpa wanted its distribution center to run 100% in the cloud—an innovative strategy, since most retail players in Brazil prefer to operate distribution centers through an on-premises environments.

When starting the implementation of the warehouse management and enterprise resource planning systems, which use Oracle Database 19c, SuperOpa understood that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offered the best combination of performance and cost to house its database. In addition, OCI would allow for the creation of virtual networks to connect with other clouds where SuperOpa’s ecommerce application and data lake are based.

With the support of OCI's commercial and technical teams, the company also chose to utilize other services, such as the OCI Virtual Cloud Network, instances and other databases such as MySQL for asynchronous jobs.

SuperOpa is also a participant in the Oracle for Startups program, obtaining credits of $1 million. This agreement was fundamental to the company's effort to run its distribution center 100% in the cloud.

With the migration to OCI, SuperOpa increased database server capabilities and gained the ability to perform real-time data streaming and integrate all its distribution channels. The savings provided by the Oracle for Startups credit program also helped keep costs low, which has allowed the distribution center to run with a positive margin.

SuperOpa’s distribution center and the Oracle Cloud data center it relies on are in the Campinas region in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. As a result, Oracle's data center latency for the distribution center is only four milliseconds, which has led to greater logistical efficiency. This directly impacted the communication between the server and the robotic product collectors, resulting in faster delivery to consumers.

Additionally, low latency was essential for access to the company's enterprise resource planning system via remote terminal, as well as for synchronized inventory control across mobile applications and online. Plus, in a matter of minutes, SuperOpa can scale up instances and databases.

Another impact of the migration was the Oracle Database 19c performance on machines with Oracle CPUs, which has allowed SuperOpa to achieve greater performance while also lowering infrastructure costs. Today, all software and databases in OCI represent a savings of approximately 30% compared to the other clouds.

SuperOpa gathers all data related to products, finance, and tax in OCI, which resulted in more efficient management. With additional improvements in inventory control and logistics, all integrated in real time, the user experience in the application directly impacted the business in a positive way.