When it comes to “digital transformation,” PlayPower — the largest manufacturer of commercial playground and recreational equipment in the world — believes it all comes down to applying data and analytics to every aspect of its business so that people can make the right decisions at the right time with the right data.
But if, like PlayPower, your business uses an acquisition-focused growth strategy, you might think this kind of accomplishment is easier said than done. After all, unifying different transactional systems like ERP and CRM post-acquisition can be incredibly hard to do without disrupting important business workflows and insights — disruptions that can jeopardize business decisions or even bring business operations to a grinding halt.
Despite those heady challenges, PlayPower’s Global Vice President of IT Alfred Sobrinho found a way to achieve that advanced level of digital transformation. He did it by unifying PlayPower’s data, data processes, and data models, so his team could more effectively respond to business users by scaling analytics efforts on-demand.
With the power of Incorta, PlayPower was able to bring all of its data from 15 source systems into Onestream, dramatically reducing their manual processing across source systems by 30% and increasing efficiency to create consolidated corporate financials by nearly 40%. They were also given the capability to create financial reports daily, giving leaders of PlayPower and the finance team better insights into their financial data.
“Data is vital to every part of our business,” explains Alfred. “We needed to have a common set of KPIs and metrics, and common dashboards and reports, across all our different brands and business units. Our analytics had to become very agile.” PlayPower was able to implement Incorta within 6 months, an incredible feat for their vast amount of data.
After unifying PlayPower’s business data in Incorta, Alfred’s team added Power BI for data visualization, trend detection, and predictive intelligence. The finance team at Playpower, because of Incorta, is now able to do their trial balances, PNL, and forecasting comparisons within Onestream, streamlining the process and saving days for their team.
Now, employees across all PlayPower’s brands, business units, and functions enjoy one, unified pane of glass that presents a common version of data truth for their business analysis and decision-making needs. And they’re achieving amazing results because of it.
Hear Alfred explain how — by short-circuiting the time and expense of traditional data engineering and data warehousing approaches — teams across PlayPower’s manufacturing, supply chain, sales, and finance functions now use accurate, unified data to make better decisions and shift perspectives whenever the market demands. Watch his on-demand presentation.