Pioneering the Future of Cinema with Exasol Data Warehouse and Sphinx IT Consulting
Case Study
Cineplexx, a leading cinema chain in Austria and Southeast Europe, partnered with Sphinx IT to modernize their data infrastructure using Exasol Data Warehouse.
Across their multinational operations, this transformation enabled:
Cineplexx, founded in 1993 and based in Vienna, Austria, has grown to become the largest cinema chain in Austria with operations expanding to 12 countries in Southeast Europe. The company‘s business model focuses on delivering a premium, consistent movie-going experience to guests across a network of modern, multi-screen cinemas, including IMAX and VR experiences. With around 500 screens and over 80,000 seats, Cineplexx manages its geographically dispersed network from Vienna while maintaining a local brand presence in each market.
To achieve this balance of centralized management and local relevance, Cineplexx relies on standardized core operational systems like point-of-sale (POS) and film scheduling. They also leverage a loyalty program, mobile app, and website to capture valuable customer data, helping them understand and serve their diverse audience better.
Austria
1300+
Entertainment
DWH powered by the Exasol Database
As Cineplexx expanded into new markets, its existing data infrastructure began to show limitations, restricting its ability to fully utilize growing data assets. The legacy solution, based on Vista’s cinema management system with an inbuilt data warehouse on Microsoft SQL Server, presented several challenges:
These constraints led to manual data manipulation in Excel, a time-consuming and error-prone process. The system struggled with growing data complexity, producing slow, inflexible reports that failed to reflect business conditions.
The lack of real-time data further limited responsiveness, as batch refreshes could take hours or days, delaying insights.
As a result, the IT team spent significant time maintaining the fragmented environment and handling ad hoc requests instead of focusing on innovation.
Recognizing the need for change, Cineplexx partnered with Sphinx, an Exasol specialist with deep expertise in data warehousing and BI automation. Sphinx brought a unique asset to the table: their Rapid Enterprise Deployment (RED) automation framework.
RED is a metadata-driven automation layer that accelerates the development of data warehousing projects. It abstracts away much of the technical complexity, allowing for rapid prototyping and iterative delivery of a full data warehouse. Using RED, Sphinx was able to deploy a functional Exasol Data Warehouse for Cineplexx in a matter of weeks, a process that would typically take months.
RED’s metadata-driven approach automated the creation of efficient, high-performance data pipelines that continuously extracted data from source systems like POS, loyalty, and mobile app databases. These pipelines were designed to capture and load data incrementally, ensuring that only new or changed data was processed. This approach, combined with RED’s change data capture (CDC) capabilities, allowed Cineplexx to achieve data freshness of up to 15 minutes, a significant improvement over their previous batch-driven approach.
To further enhance data accessibility, Sphinx implemented a REST API layer on top of the Exasol database, providing a flexible, standardized interface for accessing and manipulating data within the Exasol environment. Working closely with Cineplexx, Sphinx designed a scalable star schema model optimized for Cineplexx’s analytics use cases, with the flexibility to easily add new data sources over time. For data visualization and dashboarding, Cineplexx chose MicroStrategy, which Sphinx integrated with the Exasol Data Warehouse, creating an end-to-end analytics solution.
To ensure the new system delivered immediate value while building towards a larger scale enterprise data model, Cineplexx established an agile delivery model for rolling out new analytics applications. Business and IT teams worked collaboratively in short sprints, ensuring that each new dashboard delivered immediate value while also building towards a larger scale enterprise data model.
With near real-time data in Exasol, Cineplexx empowers local teams to make data-driven decisions. Country managers use granular insights to optimize their markets.
Key improvements:
Local insights revealed strong performance of domestic films:
A data pipeline refreshed every 15 minutes gives Cineplexx real-time visibility. Managers access live dashboards to make instant decisions, even on mobile.
Real-time actions:
These actions improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.
By integrating loyalty, app, web, and POS data, Cineplexx gains a 360° customer view to tailor each touchpoint.
Personalization initiatives:
This drives higher spend and repeat visits.
The platform enables granular forecasting and smarter operations across the network.
Key benefits:
Cineplexx improves performance today while enabling future growth.
The data platform improves efficiency and reduces costs through detailed operational insights.
Improvements:
Cineplexx identifies and captures ongoing efficiency gains while supporting long-term growth.
Cineplexx’s data transformation has laid a strong foundation for future innovation. With Exasol and Sphinx, they now have the technical and organizational agility to stay ahead in a dynamic industry.
Looking ahead, Cineplexx is focused on further enriching their data ecosystem by integrating new data sources. Key initiatives include:
Customer Stories
