From Siloed Data to Centralized Insights: How We Unified a Leader in Equipment Manufacturing
Unify data from multiple ERPs! See how we helped an agricultural equipment leader build a central data warehouse, streamline data management, and empower teams with insights to drive growth.Introduction
The company (a leader in manufacturing industrial equipment and managed services in agricultural industries) needed help extracting data from several disparate ERP systems. They wanted to extract data from 3 ERP instances, standardize source ingestion files, establish common reporting metrics, and get all of the information into one data warehouse.
What complicated the situation was that the ERP systems were from different vendors and this organisation had an active takeover strategy for years and had acquired a lot of businesses into its fold.
They had a slow and laborious process for making data inquiries and this process often took a week or more to turnaround. The extended duration required for follow-up questions on these inquiries and reports led to a frustrating and inefficient process, slowly eroding their market competitiveness. The logistical challenges involved in coordinating data extraction efforts led to a highly time-intensive endeavour.
The company realised that it needed a central repository for information that combined all the data from its ERPs and a need for a central dashboard.
With this intent for consistent analytics, the company decided to search out a partner that could advise and guide their internal team. They also wanted to invest in an Enterprise Data Warehouse and partner with consultants who had knowledge and expertise in Data Warehousing. Due to DataWelkin’s delivery and strategy expertise we were chosen for this piece of work.
Challenge
ERP business owners were operating in silos and had reservations in sharing their data and had over the years developed a lot of manual repetitive methods to collect, store, quantify, describe, and analyze their data. There were multiple versions of truth and identifying Systems of Record was a challenge.
Approach
At the end of this phase, it was agreed to adopt a ‘Drop and Conquer’ approach and divide the whole project into multiple Drops or Phases. It was agreed to have multiple Drops for the Project with each Drop having 3 Sprints of 2 weeks each to complete the Build and Test. Each Drop included 1 week for Testing/Validation and 1 week for subsequent Go Live/deployment.
We created a detailed data model design through workshops and collaborative reviews, including consolidating design requirements from key business users. We prioritised the Finance and Sales subject areas consolidation in the Data Warehouse and focussed on these in the initial Drops. Our consultants assessed the data quality of ERP and operational systems against required data standards and documented the designs for reports.
Benefits
- The client’s business teams are now more focussed on generating insights using centralised data and has freed them to perform other tasks more suited to their capabilities.
- The process enabled them to focus their efforts on delivering business value by focussing resources on their core business.
- Each stakeholder gained the ability to independently perform their own analysis and reach meaningful, actionable insights.
Results
- Building the right foundation for this company to grow its data platform was paramount. The end result was a consolidated data platform that enabled them to consolidate data from a variety of legacy tools and enable deeper insights.
Key Learnings
Ideal solution architecture is a key business enabler and essential for gaining clear, actionable business insights.
Ensure your analytics are accessible across your organization to empower your teams.
Building and maintaining a data warehouse can incur significant costs. Balance your performance and scalability requirements with budgetary constraints.