Alteryx Case Studies Historical Snapshot of Project Estimate-at-Complete: A Quantum Spatial Case Study

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	Historical Snapshot of Project Estimate-at-Complete: A Quantum Spatial Case Study Alteryx

Historical Snapshot of Project Estimate-at-Complete: A Quantum Spatial Case Study

Alteryx

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
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. Read More
About 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. Read More
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. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

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

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 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.

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.

Impact #1	The implementation of Alteryx has been a game-changer for QSI. The ability to take a 'snapshot' of all project data each week has greatly improved the Finance team's ability to track EACs and has also enabled the creation of a suite of reports for Project Managers using Tableau. This has allowed Project Managers to more easily identify large variances in EAC and be proactive in controlling project costs. Furthermore, the success of this endeavor has led the Enterprise Systems team to consider other ways that Alteryx could be used, including potentially helping with client deliverables in the production environment.

Impact #1

The implementation of Alteryx has been a game-changer for QSI. The ability to take a 'snapshot' of all project data each week has greatly improved the Finance team's ability to track EACs and has also enabled the creation of a suite of reports for Project Managers using Tableau. This has allowed Project Managers to more easily identify large variances in EAC and be proactive in controlling project costs. Furthermore, the success of this endeavor has led the Enterprise Systems team to consider other ways that Alteryx could be used, including potentially helping with client deliverables in the production environment.

Benefit #1	Significant time savings: Without Alteryx, data collection would take approximately 40 hours per week.
Benefit #2	Improved efficiency: Project Managers save time as they no longer have to compile several reports to get the information they need.
Benefit #3	Enhanced data accessibility: Project Managers no longer have to navigate through hard-to-read ERP reports to get to their bottom line.

Benefit #1

Significant time savings: Without Alteryx, data collection would take approximately 40 hours per week.

Benefit #2

Improved efficiency: Project Managers save time as they no longer have to compile several reports to get the information they need.

Benefit #3

Enhanced data accessibility: Project Managers no longer have to navigate through hard-to-read ERP reports to get to their bottom line.

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Overview

Historical Snapshot of Project Estimate-at-Complete: A Quantum Spatial Case Study

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit