SSI Consolidates Operational and Managerial CSD  Reporting on Birst

Silicone Specialties Inc (SSI), was moving from SX.e to CSD when their channel partner advised their legacy reports on Infor Reporting would not transition seamlessly to Distribution Analytics(the CSD Pre-Built content). Sensing they needed Birst expertise to leverage the Birst licensing bundled with CSD to resolve this gap, SSI asked Infor to recommend a Birst Partner, and so entered Agile Dragon Group. SSI's identified about 10 reports out of the 50+ configured in Infor Reporting required to transition without major disruption. To achieve an expedited timeline and avoid additional licensing costs, a custom Birst solution leveraging SSI's standard CloudSuite licensing and standard Data Lake connections was commissioned to support operational reporting, while a 3rd party solution was chosen to support management reporting(This will be important later).

Engaging in the last few months of the transition from SX.e to CSD, ADG created a custom data model and created ten nightly reports covering Orders, Returns, AR, AP, and Inventory. In about eight weeks of effort, a full solution was rolled out in a format that only required users to train where to access Birst and fit nicely into the legacy business processes.  

"We needed a Birst resource to ensure a smooth transition of our critical reports to Birst so we could focus on the larger transition effort. Within days of our go live, our critical reports were transitioned, balanced, and in the user's hands." 

- Robert Poplin - Chief Financial Officer

After making the operational reporting transition, SSI's analytical needs did not stop. With operational, and informational needs filled, SSI moved to answer other questions resulting in improved efficiency and saved time. One of the more innovative requests was adding audit tools for particular processes to identify when and who changes order and purchase records to answer simple questions like "Who released an order?". With less than a few days of effort, ADG built a set of Birst dashboards to support record auditing. By selecting an order or po number, all versions of the corresponding header and line records, including the all-important operator, are available for review. Today SSI can see record level change in detail for Orders, Purchases, Transfers, Products, and Customers for all records in the data lake.

"I have discovered ADG can do anything I ask for in Birst. Usually, we just get on a video conference, and after a little explaining, ADG lets me know if the request is easy or hard and has yet not to make it happen." – Brandon Cathey, Executive Vice President of Operations.

After a successful run supporting daily operational reporting, SSI felt confident enough in Birst to transition off its 3rd party solution and consolidate all analytics on Birst, again with the help of ADG. Through a standard requirements-gathering process, ADG analyzed how SSI was using their 3rd party solution and identified the critical data requirements as well as a number of improvements.  

Within less than six weeks of effort, an initial solution that not only encompasses current managerial and analytical requirements but also significantly improved the flexibility in how information was relatable across the business.  

Since the initial roll out SSI and ADG have worked together on adding dashboards and reports supporting specific job functions. One example is a sales performance dashboard which monitors company performance against ten different sales KPIs specific to product groups and vendors across Reps, Customers, and Products, allowing reps and sales management to let Birst summarize the information and people focus on how to improve. A second example is a buyer dashboard which removed the need for buyers to compile information weekly in excel to monitor inventory levels and reference against expected deliveries and transfers. A single dashboard shows current inventory levels and usage by warehouse, what purchases are outstanding and where expected, and what is currently in transit between locations for any product or set of products.

Birst modifications are initiated through a weekly call between a single resource which gathers new requirements for SSI and ADG. In a number of cases, the tweaks that are needed to update the logic behind something like a sales KPI are often accomplished on the day of request by ADG.

"ADG makes it easy for us to make changes, often same day and sometimes on our weekly call itself. At the end of the day Birst is much easier to use than our last solution, and when SSI needs to change, it is nice to have an expert on the calendar." - Jessica Martin

Even SSI's owner and current CEO uses Birst to monitor his critical vendor and customer relationships. Two dashboards with his analytics specific to what is on order and what is owed to vendors as well as which customers have fallen behind in collections have been made just for him. Birst allows him to monitor the 20% of customers and vendors that make up 80% of SSI's activity simply, easily, and in a format, he is comfortable with.

"Birst is now the sole tool used across our business from the CEO to our buyers and warehouse personnel. With ADG's help, all of our analytical needs to date have been fulfilled, but knowing as we grow we will not outgrow Birst as Infor has standardized on Birst across all their industries is a good feeling. ADG has enabled us to entirely abandon our legacy tools and move all our analytics into CSD, making our lives easier. We have achieved significantly better capabilities while at the same time reducing our analytics licensing costs." – John Barnett, President

From ADG's point of view, SSI has been an exemplary Birst customer. SSI's openness and mature expectations have allowed ADG to gain some knowledge about distribution as a business as well as a lot of knowledge about CSD data. ADG regards SSI as a strategic partner and has integrated that knowledge into their Dragon Pack for CSD. The Dragon Pack is ADG's standard CSD solution tasked with delivering functionality in a standard solution while maintaining backward compatibility with all their CSD customers and openness to extensibility. ADG looks forward to raising the analytics bar for all CSD customers with Birst and continuously increasing the value derivable for Birst customers of all shapes and sizes.