Representing a diverse membership of growers, processors, brokers, suppliers, and retailers, the North American Blueberry Council (NABC) is a key advocate for the success and profitability of the $9.1billion highbush blueberry industry.
The Opportunity: Grow the Foundation for the Future
Since 1965, the North American Blueberry Council (NABC) has served as a united voice for the American blueberry industry. In addition to advocacy, the organization plays a key role in growing the industry by providing access to data that helps connect the dots between blueberry growers, suppliers, and retailers. By sharing critical insights like seasonal crop reports, cold storage figures, and production forecasts, NABC empowers its members to make informed decisions across the agricultural supply chain.
As the organization increased its data collection and added new data sources, it struggled with a legacy data infrastructure that had become increasingly expensive, difficult to maintain, and unable to keep up with performance demands. NABC’s small internal team would spend days dealing with manual data pulls and ad hoc analytical queries, making it difficult to provide partners with insights quickly and continuously. In addition, the team lacked modern data capabilities like scheduled reporting or embedded self-service dashboards for its members.
In addition to reducing its data costs and improving performance, the organization knew it wanted to offer its members more advanced analytical capabilities. A modern data platform would allow NABC members to leverage machine learning and AI for conversational analytics, advanced forecasting, and executive summaries, increasing the value it provides its members.
After a spike in data volumes coupled with a price increase from its existing provider, NABC knew it could achieve significant ROI by migrating to a more scalable, capable, and cost-effective solution.
The Solution: BigQuery, Looker, and Bytecode IO
NABC selected Google Cloud’s BigQuery as its new data warehouse due to its lower costs, higher performance, minimal maintenance requirements, and built-in machine learning capabilities. To enable self-service analytics and establish a single source of truth, the organization also adopted Looker as its business intelligence platform.
NABC worked with Bytecode IO, the #1 Google Cloud Platform data partner, to implement the solution. Bytecode IO was chosen thanks to its proven implementation methodology, internal team of experts, and experience implementing similar solutions for hundreds of other clients across industry verticals.
Bytecode IO worked closely with NABC’s data team to plan and execute a full migration from the legacy solution to BigQuery and Looker. In addition to setting up automated ingestion pipelines and embedded Looker dashboards, Bytecode IO implemented system usage alerts and data freshness monitoring to improve platform reliability, boost executive confidence, and encourage greater user engagement.
The Result: Faster Insights and a Scalable Future
Thanks to Bytecode IO, BigQuery, and Looker, NABC was able to modernize its data infrastructure and dramatically improve performance, cost efficiency, and the value it provides members while laying the groundwork for AI-powered innovation.
- Bytecode IO completed the migration to BigQuery and Looker in just weeks without disruption to internal workflows or member-facing tools.
- NABC reduced data storage and compute costs by 90% after migrating from its previous solution to BigQuery, even as its data volumes continued to grow.
- The organization reduced its query runtime performance by 40%, helping growers, suppliers, and retailers access key insights faster and more reliably.
- NABC launched embedded dashboards for members, offering secure, self-service access to their own insights. New self-service analytics and a centralized semantic layer allow members to independently explore data through the NABC website and portal.
- The organization is building toward advanced forecasting and predictive modeling through integrated tools within the Google Cloud ecosystem, including Vertex AI, Bigquery Machine Learning and Looker.
- With a modern data platform in place, NABC is exploring new opportunities to expand its data offerings and provide even greater value to its members through conversational analytics, AI-powered executive summaries, and predictive forecasting.
Results at a Glance
- Reduced storage and compute costs by 90%
- Improved performance by reducing query runtime by 40%
- Created a future-ready foundation for machine learning and AI
“We migrated from Snowflake to BigQuery because it seamlessly integrated with our existing Looker setup and provided a more native environment for AI and other data initiatives. The transition reduced complexity, improved performance, and optimized costs by leveraging BigQuery and its built-in AI capabilities. Ultimately, it positioned us to scale our data strategy more efficiently within the Google ecosystem.” – Joe Vargas, Director of Business Intelligence, NABC