Retail has been on a rollercoaster, thanks to a global pandemic, rising inflation, the prevalence of online shopping, and supply chain challenges. Competition is steep, too, with customers searching long and hard for the best price on a product.

To stand out in the retail industry, you need to elevate your business by being nimble. And you need to have the latest technology. 

That’s what The Home Depot decided to do when it purchased Austin-based startup, BlackLocus, approximately 12 years ago. The Home Depot, founded in 1978, is the world’s largest home improvement retailer with more than 2,300 stores in North America. 

BlackLocus, now a subsidiary of The Home Depot, drives competitive intelligence for the retail giant. Its work focuses on shaping the future of retail through data science, innovation, technology, and design. BlackLocus solves customer problems with integrated research and knowledge of customer motivations and buying habits. In other words, BlackLocus is the critical technology arm driving key decisions in product pricing for The Home Depot.  

It's also instrumental in shaping The Home Depot’s competitive landscape. 

“I like to think of BlackLocus as the competitive pricing engine for The Home Depot,” says Justin Seides, a director at Slalom, who worked on the cloud migration project. 

BlackLocus performs its work in three ways: first, online competitive pricing data for comparable products is ingested. Second, BlackLocus will take all the pricing data and enrich it or build data sets while data engineering—or organizing, managing, and analyzing—the information. In the third step, the data science component, BlackLocus makes product recommendations to The Home Depot. 

However, when BlackLocus was purchased, it was using a different cloud provider than The Home Depot.  

Justin adds, “There were security and cost implications too; at this point, The Home Depot saw an opportunity to streamline its solution and only pay for what it’s using.”

The Home Depot also saw an opportunity to further modernize, optimize, and standardize its infrastructure. The goal then became to move BlackLocus to Google Cloud. 

BlackLocus worked with Slalom technology consulting to move from its previous cloud infrastructure to Google Cloud. 

“The partnership with Slalom was strong,” says Troy Zhang, a software engineer and senior manager at The Home Depot. “I had years of experience working with the Slalom team, so I felt comfortable with them coming in and helping us out.” 

The project team was highly engaged with The Home Depot and BlackLocus—even from the earliest days. “The team provided the technical guidance that we were really hoping for,” adds Troy. 

Together, the team tackled over 40 projects, from data ingestion to matching and recommendation engines. In total, the cloud migration took about eight months.  

Slalom and BlackLocus decided to use Google Kubernetes Engine to keep the environments reliable and scalable, and used BigQuery, Vertex AI, cloud storage, and Cloud SQL Server as well. 

Vertex AI is now used as a component of the data science portion of the work to make recommendations to The Home Depot. 

And BigQuery improves the analytics and data science of the solution, helping the BlackLocus team garner insights and then use those for product recommendations. 

Slalom and BlackLocus worked hand in hand to stay focused on seamless integration and continuous improvement while updating projects in real-time. The team was able to bridge communication gaps and identify dependencies as they worked. By building open communication channels and facilitating cross-team collaboration, Slalom helped empower BlackLocus to manage complexities with clarity and confidence.

For BlackLocus, development is easier and more streamlined today. There are fewer outages, so developers can spend their time making the most of their brain power, as opposed to just fixing technical issues. 

BlackLocus is also a heavy utilizer of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Troy notes, “Whereas the team was previously running the machine learning models using Jupyter Notebook on their laptops, today the team is able to get on Vertex AI with Google Cloud.”  

And that helps developers deploy their AI models easier. 

BlackLocus’ transition to Google Cloud not only ensured seamless system continuity for The Home Depot but also unlocked significant cost savings. Being on an optimized infrastructure means The Home Depot will only pay for what it’s using today—eliminating additional spend on deprecated and unused technology. 

BlackLocus will no longer pay for two cloud services, adds Troy. “We had to have a separate budget for each of the cloud services before; there’s always a little overhead if you’re paying two cloud providers.” 

Today’s rate for cloud services? Troy says it’s definitely lower than the previous rates. 

Customers can feel confident that The Home Depot is selling its products at the most competitive price. Thanks to Google Cloud’s continuous innovation, there’s no second-guessing or price-checking needed. BlackLocus enables The Home Depot to stay competitive on pricing, and at the top of its game in the home renovation industry. Security is enhanced, too, ensuring customers receive top-level data protection. Customers know they can count on The Home Depot, leading to customer retention and loyalty in a dynamic market. 

What does all this BlackLocus work mean for The Home Depot? The retail giant move forward with ongoing innovations in data science-driven retail recommendations to continue its stride towards success and growth in the home improvement industry. 

“If our systems are working well, they’re designed to keep our prices as low as possible, while still maintaining The Home Depot margins,” says Troy. “And it will keep The Home Depot's mission statement of keeping our products at everyday low prices ‘true to a T.’”