Lumen Technologies Division · Technology · Denver, CO · 26 weeks
9 legacy reporting systems consolidated into one
A regional telecom had nine reporting systems from years of acquisitions. Their monthly close took 18 days because of manual reconciliation across these systems. We merged all data into one Snowflake platform, cutting the close process to 3 days and saving $3.1 million each year.
Challenge
The company had 9 reporting systems, each inherited from separate acquisitions. They operated on different databases, used inconsistent metric definitions, and were managed by separate teams. Closing the books took 18 days and required 14 analysts to manually reconcile data. Maintaining these systems cost $3.1 million annually.
Approach
We spent four weeks mapping nine systems, their data models, and how they connected. Next, we created a unified Snowflake environment with a shared semantic layer. Over 22 weeks, we migrated each system one by one. Each migration included a four-week parallel run to ensure stability before shutting down the old system.
Outcome
We consolidated nine systems in week 26, cutting annual infrastructure costs from $3.1 million to $480,000. The monthly close cycle shrank from 18 days to just 3. This freed up a 14-person reconciliation team, who we reassigned to strategic analytics projects.
How We Spotted Data Issues Before Merging the Systems
In just four weeks, we found three systems, each costing around $800K a year in licenses. And get this, fewer than 10 people were actually using them. No brainer, right? We shut them down right away to stop the money drain. After that, we turned our attention to consolidating the rest.
We ran both systems side by side so we could spot migration hiccups early, way before they became costly messes.
We kept the old systems running alongside Snowflake for about a month. This way, the business team could double-check the data, and we caught any weird edge cases that slipped through during the switch.
How We Helped the Reconciliation Team Crush Their Workflow Roadblocks
Alright, here’s what happened. Fourteen analysts were buried, spending around 18 days a month just on manual reconciliation. Crazy, right? All that time wasted on busywork instead of pushing projects ahead. This went on for over a year and really held back the analytics team. We stepped in, helped them flip the script, and wiped out the backlog. Suddenly, the bottleneck was gone, and productivity took off. Even the CFO caught on and gave us props.
Results
- $3.1M Annual infrastructure savings
- 18 days to 3 days Monthly close cycle
- 9 to 1 Reporting systems consolidated
- 26 wks Full consolidation timeline
We were tied to those nine systems for 12 years because nobody wanted to deal with them. Thinklytics pulled everything together in 26 weeks, and we cut our monthly close from 18 days down to 3. Now, the team that used to handle reconciliation is focused on analysis.
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