Revitalized Data Ecosystem provides a Single Source of Truth

The Challenge

A retail supply chain organization was plagued by a fractured data ecosystem due to disparate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, disconnected processes, siloed business units, and a lack of data governance. In the current state, a customer’s information or pieces of a customer’s information could exist on one or several ERP systems.

To further exacerbate the issue there were no standardization guidelines in place resulting in the inputted data lacking uniformity. In combination, these issues caused end users to question data quality and integrity. Furthermore, the organization was dealing with a legacy reporting system with limited data loads. This data constraint led to delays in report delivery that resulted in partial, stale enterprise reporting.

The Solution

After a brief assessment, it was clear to our team of experts that the best way to cleanse the organization’s data to optimize reporting and analysis capabilities was to unify all data systems into a central repository. This meant:

1. Defining a singular system of record for integrating multiple sources of data (Customer, Product, and Transaction)
2. Selecting the appropriate ETL tool to seamlessly integrate the data to the desired location
3. Leveraging a modern data warehousing platform to centralize data (including current and historical data)
4. Utilizing a self-service business intelligence (BI) tool to pull together large data sets in an automated way allowing for prompt refreshing capabilities for near real-time analysis
5. Providing customized training to data consumers and holding them accountable for cleaning and maintaining their data

The Result

Now equipped with a combination of a proven methodology and modern data tools, the organization was able to breakdown their data silos and help improve data performance through a data centralization initiative. In tandem with the business’s key stakeholders, our architects were able to design a sophisticated data model and build an enterprise data warehouse that could integrate multiple data sources into a single repository.

Additonally, our Business Analyst were able to help create updated policies & procedures that defined data ownership and access. Bridging the gap between people and technology allowed for the organization to upgrade their data ecosystem to not only achieve a single source of truth but to improve the overall experience for both the data consumers and their customers.