Customer Story

Modernized Data Foundation Supports Growth Trajectory and AI Initiatives at PE-Backed Company

What we did

Delivered an end-to-end data integration and analytics strategy that unified disparate ERP systems and legacy data sources into a centralized Databricks platform, enabling cross-organizational visibility, AI-driven decision making, and eliminating 1,000 man-hours of manual reporting labor.

Built a scalable modern data foundation with automated reporting pipelines, enterprise-wide semantic modeling, and democratized analytics capabilities to support Whetstone’s growth trajectory and future AI initiatives.

Industry

  • Food & Bev

Technologies

  • Azure
  • ·
  • Databricks
  • ·
  • Power BI

The Problem

Formed through the 2024 merger of three Chicago-area entities, Whetstone Distribution, a midsized Midwest meat distribution and processing company, had much to gain by unlocking the plethora of business intelligence generated by its growing market presence. Standing in the way, however, was a formidable obstacle: four disparate instances of the same enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. To counter this, the combined entity needed to integrate data to enable decision makers to conduct detailed cross-organizational analysis necessary to optimize its business operations and unlock growth. 

As a result, Whetstone required a modern data platform to unify its disparate systems to not only drive self-service data analytics but to establish a solid foundation for future Al initiatives.  

Having access to weekly KPIs absolutely transformed our business. It saves us so much time weekly.

Beth LaBossiere, Chief Transformation Officer at Whetstone

The Solution

Since it lacked in-house data analytics expertise, Whetstone turned to Analytics8 for assistance. We put together a data migration, modernization, and implementation strategy to help the company capitalize on its private-equity-financed growth-through-acquisition plan.

The project entailed: 

  • Designing and implementing a modern Databricks’ data warehouse on Microsoft Azure-hosted environment to meet current data and analytics needs while also establishing a foundation for Al and advanced analytics. 
  • Empowering Whetsone to develop an AI pricing model that autonomously optimizes pricing decisions based on inventory, cost, and market dynamics.  
  • Unifying divergent Canopy ERP data using generative AI into a single semantic model, enabling enterprise-wide Microsoft Power BI reporting. 
  • Building secure ingestion pipelines for payroll, budgets, commodity data, and loT (Internet of Things)  
  • Introducing a governance framework (Databricks’ Unity Catalog) to ensure trust, standardization, and scalability. 
  • Replacing spreadsheets with automated reporting, providing real-time visibility into sales, operations, and inventory data across entities.  
  • Using the semantic model within PowerBI to democratize data access and provide all decision makers with the ability to conduct daily analyses – something previously only provided to a select group of business leaders. 

The Results

The time savings and outcomes have been game changing.

Previously, Whetstone decision makers spent a combined 15 hours each week locating data across four ERP systems and building custom reports.

The new centralized approach saves Whetstone approximately 1000-man-hours by eliminating the manual labor previously required to create Excel-based reports and by providing a single source of truth through their new Databricks data warehouse. 

“Having access to weekly KPIs absolutely transformed our business,” said Beth LaBossiere, Whetstone’s Chief Transformation Officer. “It saves us so much time weekly.” 

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