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Historical Snapshot of Project Estimate-at-Complete: A Quantum Spatial Case Study
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Use Cases
- Leasing Finance Automation
- Time Sensitive Networking
The Challenge
Quantum Spatial, Inc. (QSI) was facing a significant challenge with their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. While the ERP was effective for many tasks, it was not capable of tracking historical data, specifically project Estimates-at-Complete (EAC). The inability to track EAC on a week-to-week basis made it difficult for the Finance team to understand variances in EAC and identify potential issues if a project EAC varied greatly from its baseline. Furthermore, the company's ERP and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems were not integrated, creating gaps in the project lifecycle data collection. This situation was further complicated by the fact that QSI had no formal Business Intelligence (BI) system in place, and the Enterprise Systems team was unfamiliar with Alteryx, a tool that could potentially solve their historical data problems.
About The Customer
Quantum Spatial, Inc. (QSI) is a company that was struggling with the limitations of their ERP system, particularly its inability to track historical data. The company's Finance team needed a way to track project Estimates-at-Complete (EAC) on a weekly basis to understand variances and identify potential issues. Additionally, the lack of integration between the company's ERP and CRM systems was creating gaps in the project lifecycle data collection. QSI had no formal BI system in place, and the Enterprise Systems team was unfamiliar with Alteryx, a tool that could potentially solve their historical data problems.
The Solution
QSI engaged Slalom Consulting for BI advice, who introduced them to Alteryx. Recognizing its potential, QSI used Alteryx to create a workflow that took a 'snapshot' of all project data each week, allowing for week-to-week comparison of project data. The workflow pulled data from the ERP SQL tables and transformed it in various ways, including adding qualitative data such as project manager, account manager, and subvertical. The workflow was run in the early hours of Thursday mornings to ensure all timesheets and units had been submitted for the previous week and to avoid overloading the database during working hours. A second workflow was then run to retrieve the data from the EAC Snapshot database and convert it into a .tde so that Tableau could easily digest it. The EAC was then compared to the project baseline for variance in gross margin, with several other calculations providing insight into how a project had progressed over time.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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