Modernizing data architectures for efficiency and inventory planning in logistics

Client

Third-Party Logistics (3PL) Provider

Technology

Snowflake

Matillion

Fivetran

Services

Data Foundations

Analytics

Impact

Single Source

of truth across multiple warehouse management systems, eliminating data silos and reporting delays

Reduced Stockouts

operations team used demand insights from the data warehouse to improve inventory planning

Faster Fulfillment

facility managers identified warehouse inefficiencies and improved order fulfillment turnaround time

Challenge

Eliminating data silos and delays in reporting

Our client, a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, focused on helping businesses handle their e-commerce order fulfillment and retail distribution, has fulfillment centers strategically located across the nation to reduce order transit time.

The client has multiple warehouse management systems (WMS) for inventory management and for monitoring warehouse activities such as receiving, putaway, picking, packing, and shipping. Multiple Warehouse Management systems from different vendors resulted in data silos and data inconsistencies creating delays in enterprise-wide reporting. They needed a solution that would consolidate their data, reduce maintenance overhead, and allow them to scale in size as their data needs continued to grow.

Solution

Creating a scalable data architecture for unified reporting

OneSix implemented a solution that utilizes modern cloud data architecture to reduce maintenance overhead as well as allow the client to scale in size as their data needs continued to grow.

The solution consisted of replicating all the data from various operational systems into a data lake. A data warehouse was designed to consolidate all data into a centralized location designed for easier access, analysis, and reporting.

Technologies Implemented

Snowflake was leveraged to create a highly secure, scalable data lake and data warehouse environment.
Fivetran provided resilient data pipelines sourcing data from multiple WMS systems and loading data into the data lake, saving time and money on data engineering development
Matillion was the transformation and orchestration engine for building the enterprise data model in the data warehouse.
Tableau provided executive dashboards and customer-facing reporting across the firm driving actionable insights and trends.

Results

Empowering data-driven decisions with strategic insights

With this single source of truth (the cloud data warehouse), the organization was able to generate comprehensive reporting on KPIs that allowed the business to look at these numbers with confidence to support strategic decision-making.The operations team utilized these reports generated from the data warehouse for inventory planning to reduce the risk of stockouts and identify demand patterns. The facility managers utilized the reports to identify inefficiencies in warehouse activities to improve the order fulfillment turnaround time.