Background
ATD, the tire distribution giant, was looking to streamline planning processes that originally involved working with spreadsheets and two specialized, expensive silo solutions.
ATD managed reporting through Excel spreadsheets, which contained different levels of details and lacked standardization because they came from various distribution centers and warehouses. Managers struggled to consolidate data related to historical labor rates, productivity rates and other metrics, which greatly impacted their labor planning and forecasting accuracy.
The company wanted more flexibility in building financial and predictive models and a single platform that could easily support its data architecture built on MS SQL Server. It sought a holistic solution that could seamlessly connect data from multiple distribution centers, standardize it and leverage Power BI’s visualization capabilities for reporting based on business intelligence and analytics.
In addition, the ATD team wanted the solution to overcome Power BI’s limitations, avoid using DAX language and incorporate AI and machine learning capabilities for faster time to insight.
Key Challenges
- Fragmented data led to difficulties in generating accurate labor planning and forecasting.
- Existing tools didn’t provide the flexibility needed for building financial and predictive models.
- Outdated data caused constraints in reporting and visualization through the lack of Power BI integration.
Transforming Planning and Analytics Processes with Acterys
After extensively evaluating several xP&A solutions on the market, ATD chose Acterys for its extremely fast implementation, unique integrations with Power BI to match its analytics standard and the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).
The platform offers powerful write-back capabilities and a highly intuitive data modeling module for building customized reports and visuals. Since Acterys supports all the familiar environments, like Power BI, SQL and SSAS, the learning curve for the team was short, and they readily became acquainted with the solution after the training.
Using Acterys, ATD has built a robust labor planning application on Power BI that is standardized, easy to configure and roll out, quick to execute and offers all the functionality users need to handle diverse data feeds. Since Acterys includes AI and machine learning capabilities to support various financial reporting models, the team saved significant time and effort that would have otherwise been spent on writing long Python scripts and rigorous testing.
According to ATD’s vice president of planning and analytics, Acterys’ true power lies in its ability to build relational models fast without any coding — enabling standard finance teams to create reports and visualizations based on multi-dimensional models without spending hours.
Results
With Acterys, the standardization has saved the company hundreds of hours, as it’s been a big driver of productivity within the team. Today, over 400 users are working with Acterys to handle ATD’s planning, budgeting, forecasting and reporting processes with ease and speed. Data consolidation resulted in 50% improvement in accuracy in labor planning and forecasting. ATD is using the product for not only planning and budgeting but also for non-financial use cases.
As the product is based on ATD’s existing IT infrastructure standards, the in-house resources readily adapted to the new application and later provided higher productivity rates.
In addition to this, Acterys brought significant cost savings from using a single platform and avoiding license costs for other legacy CPM solutions, providing a far lower TCO than any of the alternatives considered.
ATD’s adoption of Acterys successfully addressed challenges in data management, flexibility and reporting capabilities. This streamlined solution facilitated data standardization, improved flexibility and integrated seamlessly with Power BI while incorporating advanced AI and machine learning functionalities.
As a result, ATD achieved enhanced productivity, significant cost savings and greater accuracy in planning and reporting processes. Acterys proved to be a strategic asset, enabling ATD to optimize its operations and drive efficiency across the organization.
