Case study · Industry
Replacing Excel with real-time reporting across 21 global markets
Automating 80+ daily KPIs for a multi-billion dollar consumer goods business: one dashboard, every site, every day.
80+
KPIs reviewed at every daily meeting
21
Global markets, one shared reporting standard
0
Reliance on Excel left in the process
The client
Our client, a multi-billion dollar business active in 21 markets across Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Australia, runs daily operations meetings across all of its sites globally. Over 80 KPIs are reviewed at every meeting, covering recent performance and forecasting upcoming pipeline demand.
Before our involvement, these meetings ran on data collected in Microsoft Excel, with no way to compare one site against another. We were engaged to turn this intensely manual process into an automated one, with room for deeper analysis and better forecasting.
The challenges
- •Global accessibility: the solution had to work consistently for a suitable, end-to-end deployment across the client’s international estate.
- •Multiple layers of stakeholders, from warehouse operations managers up to senior executives, all needing the same underlying data at the right level of detail.
- •Real-time data: the meetings depend on figures being as current as possible, every single day.
What we delivered
- ✓A custom, form-based data entry solution for the client and their third-party logistics partners (3PLs).
- ✓Dimensional modelling of the underlying logistics business processes, in Microsoft SQL Server.
- ✓ETL processes built in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to move data from source to target systems.
- ✓Interactive dashboards, built for daily performance meetings, with a security model restricting access to authorised users only.
The outcome
- ✓An interactive dashboard serving every level, from warehouse operations managers to senior executives.
- ✓Long-term projections, site-on-site comparisons, and the ability to drill into every KPI horizontally and vertically.
- ✓Enhanced decision-making capability and business insight, with Excel-based data collection and reporting eliminated entirely.
The founder’s take
“When 21 markets are all reporting the same way, on the same day, leadership stops arguing about whose numbers are right and starts talking about what to do about them. That shift, from spreadsheet chaos to one shared truth, is the whole point.”
Thomas Madden
Founder & CEO, IO Analytics