A forecast misses expectations. A dashboard suddenly looks wrong. An automated process produces an unexpected result. For a top-5 quick-service restaurant, detecting that something had happened was only the beginning. Teams also needed to understand why, and quickly determine whether model drift, a data pipeline failure, or an infrastructure issue was responsible. The organization partnered with Elder Research, a MANTECH company, to identify an observability approach that could provide clearer answers, accelerate resolution, and help teams address problems before they became larger failures.
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The Challenge
The chain’s legacy monitoring tools often produced alerts without context, making it difficult to determine root causes and leading to longer response times. The challenge was to shift from a reactive mode—where teams spend valuable time chasing ambiguous alerts and troubleshooting failures—to a proactive state enabled by observability.
Faster visibility into why something happened, whether positive or negative, could accelerate the path to resolution, saving time and money and enhancing customer satisfaction.
The assessment criteria addressed several areas, including
- the ease and speed with which data scientists and engineers could leverage and manage each platform
- the robustness of features such as scalability and support for custom metrics or various data types
- the practical realities of administration like licensing, support, identity management, and partnership flexibility
The goal was clear: deliver actionable insights and recommendations that would reduce the time required to pinpoint the source of problems, empower teams to anticipate and address issues, and future-proof the corporation’s analytic operations.
The Solution
During a rigorous proof-of-concept, Elder Research, a MANTECH Company, led the evaluation of multiple monitoring platforms, assessing each option for usability, features/functionality, and administrative burden. We then designed and executed a robust platform assessment process.
We not only provided feedback on the platforms themselves but also strengthened and refined the assessment rubric—ensuring that evaluation criteria reflected industry best practices and were adaptable to future technology shifts. Multiple platforms were tested for their feature sets, usability, integration capabilities, and efficiency.
The team collaborated in cycles, completing comprehensive writeups and sharing knowledge with stakeholders biweekly. Throughout, Elder Research maintained full transparency with its process and communications, enabling informed decision-making for the client without bias or pre-existing preference for any technology vendor.
The Results
The assessment delivered clear, actionable insights, allowing the company’s analytics and IT teams to make strategic decisions that balanced current operational realities with future scalability.
Elder Research’s feedback on the evaluation rubric was incorporated, strengthening the client’s internal capacity for objective technology review.
On the front line, the selected tool not only helped developers access all the detailed information they needed to respond quickly when issues arose. It also equipped teams to anticipate and prevent full-system failures because the tool flagged anomalies upstream.
By remaining tool-agnostic, Elder Research provided a decision framework that would adapt as new technologies entered the market, positioning the global restaurant chain for enduring success in a dynamic digital landscape. Our unbiased approach ensured that technology choices aligned with the client’s broader mission—supporting innovation while maximizing ROI and long-term value.
In an industry where technology options grow and shift rapidly, our independence is key. By leveraging expertise across platforms and avoiding contractual preferences, Elder Research, a MANTECH company, delivers solutions matched precisely to each client’s context—and evolves alongside them as the market changes.