One set of numbers, and dashboards the floor will actually open
Most operations have the same number in four places and a different answer in each. We bring your scale, ERP, TMS and spreadsheet data into one governed place and build the views your managers need each morning. The aim is simple: when someone quotes a margin, nobody argues about where it came from.
Sound familiar?
Situations this work is built for. If a few of them describe your operation, you are on the right page.
Finance and operations never agree on last month's numbers.
I cannot tell you our margin on a load until weeks after it ships.
We have a dashboard, but nobody opens it.
Half our reporting is someone copying exports into a spreadsheet.
What we build
- Single source of truth
- A governed data model that joins tickets, orders, inventory, costs and pricing across your systems, with agreed definitions for the terms people argue about.
- Warehouse and pipelines
- A cloud or on-prem warehouse fed by scheduled and near-real-time pipelines from your ERP, scale software, TMS, WMS and spreadsheets, with alerting when a feed breaks.
- Dashboards operations reads
- Short, task-based views for the yard boss, plant manager and dispatcher, designed around the decisions they make at 6 a.m., not around what the tool can draw.
- Data quality
- Automated checks for duplicates, missing weights, impossible values and late feeds, with exceptions sent to the person who can fix them at the source.
- Margin by load, commodity and SKU
- Landed cost, freight, handling and market price joined to each transaction, so you can see which loads, grades and customers actually make money.
How the work runs
Assessment
2–3 weeksWe inventory your data sources, interview the people who build reports by hand, and agree the handful of questions the business most needs answered. You get a written findings report and a prioritized roadmap.
Foundation
4–8 weeksWe stand up the warehouse, the first pipelines and the core data model, and reconcile it against numbers finance already trusts.
Build
6–12 weeks per phaseWe add sources and dashboards one decision at a time, showing working views every week and retiring the matching hand-built spreadsheet as each goes live.
Run
MonthlyPipeline monitoring, data quality follow-up, new metrics and user support on a monthly retainer.
Tools we commonly use
- PostgreSQL
- Snowflake
- BigQuery
- dbt
- Airbyte
- Apache Airflow
- Metabase
- Power BI
- Python
- SQL Server
We pick tools to fit what you already run and what your team can maintain.
Questions buyers ask
Do we need a data warehouse, or is a spreadsheet enough?
A spreadsheet is enough until several systems must agree or someone spends days a month assembling reports. At that point a warehouse pays for itself in trust and time. For smaller operations we start with a single PostgreSQL database rather than an expensive platform.
Which BI tool should we use?
We are tool-neutral and recommend whatever fits your team and licenses. If you already use Power BI or Tableau, we build there, and if you do not, we suggest an open option like Metabase. The data model underneath stays the same either way.
How do you handle bad data in our source systems?
We measure it first, then fix it at the source where possible. Automated checks flag missing or impossible values daily and send each one to the person who owns the record. We do not hide bad data behind a polished dashboard.
Who owns the data and the models?
You do. The warehouse runs in your cloud account or your data center, and the pipeline code, data models and dashboards are delivered to you with documentation. You can switch providers or take it in-house at any point.
Further reading
- Building a single source of truth for operations data
How to bring scale tickets, work orders and loads into one trusted data layer, and build dashboards operators open daily instead of reports nobody reads.
- Where AI actually pays off in a recycling or scrap operation (and where it does not)
Where AI earns its keep in a scrap yard or recycling plant, from scale ticket capture to pricing support, and where it is a poor fit or not worth the cost.