Client: Construction Specialties

COMPANYPROFILE: Construction Specialties manufactures and sells specialty architectural products internationally, with over 30 locations in 20 countries worldwide. Its products include interior wall and door protection, entrance flooring, expansion joint covers, louvers, grilles, sun controls, specialty venting and privacy track/curtains. The company serves architects and designers, building owners, facility managers and contractors.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Environment Assessment and Analytic Proof-of-Concept

ENVIRONMENT: SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, iDashboards, Salesforce, Proprietary Applications

SUMMARY: Construction Specialties (C-S) was looking to partner with a vendor to help gain corporate support for an IT initiative that would introduce an enterprise data warehouse and advanced analytics. Plagued by siloed data sources, hand-scripted query data integrations, and segregated platforms for reporting and dashboards, C-S envisioned a consolidated data environment with a unified reporting and dashboard platform, plus the ability to perform predictive analysis. Y&L engaged and presented two deliverables to help provide the support needed by the IT group: an analytic proof-of-concept, and a current/future state assessment.
The analytic proof-of-concept aimed to show what potential Insight could be derived by taking sample data and modeling it in a relational manner. For demonstration purposes, the data was loaded and modeled in Teradata Virtual Machine Edition and manipulated in Tableau. The results were eye opening for C-S group, having never been able to drill into their static reports or make correlations from the data on the fly.
An in-depth assessment of their environment was produced based on interviews with various business and technical leaders. Y&L reviewed each of the applications that made up C-S’s quote-to-order process, and reviewed numerous reference architectures. The goal was to compile a complete end-to-end view of how data is consumed, created, and represented. The final deliverable provided breakdowns on the current state, recommendations for future state, and a roadmap for moving to the next step in the journey. C-S’s IT leaders were able to leverage the results of the proof-of-concept and the assessment document to present their initiative to company leaders.