Download Client Story

Cleveland Steel Container: Efficiencies and Insights with Data Warehouse Project

Cleveland Steel Container (CSC) needed a data warehouse revamp. A previous data warehouse project hadn’t provided the value they’d hoped for, so they sought a new partner who would take the time to investigate and understand their needs, go beyond out-of-the-box solutions, and help train and empower their growing analytics department to take the reins. CSC reached out directly to WhereScape, who knew right away to bring in Resultant.

The Problem

CSC’s old reporting system didn’t have clear documentation about the hows and whys of the business criteria and rules it utilized to generate reports. As reporting needs evolved and required new information, it was easier to build new logic layers on top of what existed than to dig down and figure out what to rewrite. However, these layers acted more like band-aids than sustainable solutions for their data’s long-term health.

To get any usable reports, team members followed a cumbersome, time-consuming, error-prone process, and couldn’t generate reports much more often than monthly.

To support growth and stay aligned with their goals, CSC needed help to

Decipher the existing rules and rewrite them.
Standardize what the rules should be across the organization.
Build a data warehouse solution to easily provide more timely and insightful reporting.

About the Client

Cleveland Steel Container is one of the largest manufacturers of steel pails in the United States, marketing its products throughout North America to both Fortune 500 companies and small, family-owned businesses.

Outcomes

Faster reporting response and generation times with more drill-down capabilities
New dashboards with previously unavailable insights
Automated daily scrap and variance reporting relative to production numbers
Deeper access into sales team members’ data for leadership to more effectively mentor and guide individuals
Consistent internal finance processes to more accurately understand exact costs of goods sold, labor, and distribution
New automated data processes that bring efficiency to the finance team

Our approach

In our discovery phase, we found far more layers of nested logic than anyone anticipated.

We knew this wasn’t a simple “build a widget” situation and that a sustainable solution meant untangling decades of knots in the logic to get to the root of CSC’s issues. The cloud data warehouse construction work that followed not only made information more actionable for CSC but also filled in procedural details and even some operational knowledge gaps.

We’d look at what everyone thought was a simple metric and then realize it was eight layers deep. We’d have to dig through all those layers of reporting to find how it truly was calculated.

- Preston Howell, Client Success Leader at Resultant

CSC’s data warehouse development revealed solutions for current data and process issues and led to achieving big wins:

Enhanced reports automatically generate daily, eliminating difficult manual monthly processes.
Reports give greater visibility into new business trends and sales activity.
Accounts receivable (AR) report transformed from 500 printed pages to an interactive dashboard with critical points highlighted.
Increased capabilities for AR application processing, highlighting customers with higher-than-expected application complexity.
AR aging includes net-zero accounts with open transactions, unavailable in previous reporting.
AR aging includes customer purchase history, previously only available as separate records.
Daily scrap steel data enables a strategic approach to the production process byproduct, not possible with monthly reporting.

The Impact

In the eleven months of partnering with CSC, we replaced key legacy reporting for the sales and financial subject areas with dashboards of accurate, timely, actionable information. These analytics improvements enable CSC to better manage and understand their company by providing:

Faster reporting response and generation times with more drill-down capabilities
New dashboards with previously unavailable insights
Automated daily scrap and variance reporting relative to production numbers
Deeper access into sales team members’ data for leadership to more effectively mentor and guide individuals
Consistent internal finance processes to more accurately understand exact costs of goods sold, labor, and distribution
New automated data processes that bring efficiency to the finance team

Cleveland Steel Container: Efficiencies and Insights with Data Warehouse Project

The Problem

In our discovery phase, we found far more layers of nested logic than anyone anticipated.

The Impact

Why Advanced Analytics Matter to Any Business with Skills Inventory Resources

Rapidly Growing Retina Care Provider Finds a Clear View into Data

Resultant Helps Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Refine Their Mission through Data

Ready to challenge your thinking?

Cleveland Steel Container: Efficiencies and Insights with Data Warehouse Project

The Problem

In our discovery phase, we found far more layers of nested logic than anyone anticipated.

The Impact

Impact Stories

Why Advanced Analytics Matter to Any Business with Skills Inventory Resources

Rapidly Growing Retina Care Provider Finds a Clear View into Data

Resultant Helps Central Indiana Corporate Partnership Refine Their Mission through Data

Ready to challenge your thinking?