Retail · 2023

From spreadsheet chaos to one metrics fabric

National retail group

Data & analyticsSnowflakeBI

Challenge

Merchants and finance each had their own definitions of sell-through, margin, and shrink. Dashboards conflicted, Monday meetings started with debates about data—not decisions. IT could not trace metric lineage when numbers drifted.

Solution

We stood up a curated semantic layer with named owners per metric, nightly quality checks, and role-based dashboards. Pipelines landed trusted store and e-commerce signals into a warehouse with clear SLAs; we paired technical delivery with office hours for analysts.

Metric catalog with definitions, grain, and owner on every KPI
Data quality gates before publish to BI layer
Executive summary views plus drill paths for operators
Adoption plan: office hours, certification, and feedback loop

Results

Aligned leadership reviews on a single set of KPIs
Faster month-end close commentary with fewer fire drills
Analysts spend time on insight, not reconciliation