About PriceSmart
PriceSmart, the leading membership club across Central America, Colombia, and the Caribbean, serves over 3 million members through 47 clubs in 13 countries. Renowned for its affordable prices on premium products and services, PriceSmart drives $4 billion in annual revenue.
Its market leadership requires the company’s full attention to design and implement scalable and resilient architectures to support its growth goals. PriceSmart turned to Fresche for solutions to modernize its systems and support its ambitious growth plans.
The Business Case: Eliminate Barriers to Growth
PriceSmart has ambitious plans to expand its membership base and enhance operations across Central America, Colombia, and the Caribbean. As the region’s largest membership club operator, its success relies on trust, value, and convenience. Members depend on PriceSmart for premium goods, services, and seamless, dependable experiences.
However, growth brings new challenges. Business critical systems, strain under new demands and operational inefficiencies become magnified, and system maintenance becomes less tolerated. All focus is where it should be—on customer satisfaction. The technology teams are under pressure to keep systems efficient, secure, and ready to support the company’s goals.
In addition, disaster recovery plans must evolve with the accelerating pace of change to ensure resilience against unexpected disruptions. To support its ambitious growth, PriceSmart sought scalable and future-proof infrastructure. They partnered with Fresche to modernize infrastructure, enhance resilience, and remove barriers to growth.
The Solution: Enable Resilience and Unlock Scalability
Fresche tackled PriceSmart’s challenges with a deep understanding of their unique needs and created solutions that prioritized reliability and scalability, with minimal disruption.
The transformation began with the migration of PriceSmart’s IBM i infrastructure to Fresche’s secure cloud in a Tier 4 data center. This step eliminated the constraints of the on-premises system and provided the resilience and flexibility required to serve customers with confidence.
To strengthen defenses and improve recovery times, Fresche consolidated disaster recovery processes and implemented real-time replication to a second secure data center. These measures improved RPO and RTO times to enable swift restoration of critical systems and created a solid foundation for modernization.
To support its 15–18% annual growth, PriceSmart sought a consumption model that matched those expectations. Fresche executed a live migration to Power 10 and V7R5. Despite the scale of this migration, this transition required only two hours of downtime and turned what could have been a major disruption into a seamless change for employees and customers alike.
New backup tools and processes were implemented to provide a seamless experience with zero downtime. This advancement strengthened customer trust and ensured uninterrupted service across global time zones.
Fresche also implemented targeted application remediation to address bottlenecks on critical LPARs and enhance overall resilience. To lighten the load on PriceSmart’s internal IT team, Fresche assumed responsibility for day-to-day infrastructure management. This allowed internal resources, with decades of business knowledge, to focus on strategic initiatives and explore new opportunities for innovation.
The Business Benefits: From Vulnerable to Resilient
With Fresche, PriceSmart achieved a complete operational overhaul. Improvements in disaster recovery allowed the rapid restoration of production systems, reduced downtime, and maintained operational stability.
With cloud, PriceSmart gained the scalability to support their operations. Application performance tuning and architectural changes upgrades accelerated performance and enabled the company to handle peak demands efficiently.
Zero-downtime backups reinforced the trust PriceSmart has built with its members by ensuring uninterrupted service. Previously, routine backups often caused delays, interruptions, or downtime, eroding confidence in system reliability. With Fresche’s advancements, members now experience a seamless service, even during peak operational periods, which strengthens their trust in PriceSmart’s ability to deliver consistent value.
Meanwhile, the move to Power 10 technology positioned the business for consistent growth, to meet an impressive annual increase of 15–18%. By working collaboratively with Fresche, PriceSmart’s IT team could redirect its efforts toward core business goals and focus on innovative projects that contribute to the company’s success.
The Next Chapter for PriceSmart
The next chapter for PriceSmart focuses on unlocking the potential of its upgraded infrastructure to deliver more value through data-driven insights and innovation.
The enhanced platform will enable PriceSmart to provide critical data to advanced analytics engines. It will ensure timely, secure, and precise decisions across the organization. These capabilities will help the business identify trends, anticipate member needs, and improve operations with accuracy.
Beyond analytics, the infrastructure will act as a foundation for AI initiatives. As PriceSmart adopts AI applications, the platform will deliver data correlations and insights that create tangible business value. This effort will improve customer experiences, advance operational efficiency, and refine strategies to maintain a competitive edge.
For PriceSmart, the partnership with Fresche paved the way for sustainable growth and innovation. PriceSmart now operates with increased confidence, agility, and the ability to scale seamlessly.
Discover how tailored solutions like PriceSmart’s can transform your operations—schedule a consultation today.
