BI for Canadian manufacturers and distributors.
From days-to-decisions to real-time.
Fractional BI for industrial SMBs and mid-market distributors. ERP-integrated, multi-product-line, monthly-close-compressed. Senior practitioners who've shipped Power BI environments on Dynamics 365, Sage, NetSuite, and SAP Business One.
Four product lines, one truth, no time.
The patterns we see in mid-market manufacturer / distributor BI engagements:
ERP ≠ reporting
Dynamics, Sage, NetSuite all generate transactions. None of them tell you margin per product line per region without help.
Spreadsheet roulette
Operations leans on a 17-tab Excel that one person edits. They go on vacation; the wheels come off.
Monthly close drags
8 days to close. Half of that is reconciling against three sources of truth that don't agree.
Inventory visibility lags
You know last week's inventory. Today's takes a phone call.
Patterns we ship for manufacturing clients.
- ERP-to-Power-BI semantic models. Dynamics 365, Sage 300/X3, NetSuite, SAP Business One. Star-schema where it fits, denormalized where the workload demands it.
- Margin-by-product-line scorecards. Revenue, COGS, gross margin, by line, by region, by customer cohort. Trended monthly.
- Real-time inventory dashboards. SKU-level visibility, reorder thresholds, slow-mover alerts, working-capital turnover.
- Monthly-close acceleration. Automated reconciliation between subsidiary ledgers and the GL. Variance dashboards before close, not after.
- Sales-rep performance dashboards. Pipeline, conversion, win-rate by rep / region / vertical, with row-level security so reps see their own.
- Multi-warehouse rollups. One scorecard across 2-10 facilities, governed centrally, drillable.
Quick win
Implemented Dynamics 365 for CRM and operational tracking. Built a Power BI semantic model with executive and operational dashboards on top. Cleaned the underlying data to one definition per metric, with row-level security for the regional GMs. Monthly close went from 8 days to 2. Manual reporting dropped ~20 hours a week. Leadership now reads one number, not three.
Common questions from manufacturing leaders.
We're on Sage 300 / X3. Does Power BI talk to it?
Yes. We use the standard Sage data extracts (or direct ODBC for X3) into a staging layer, then build the semantic model on top. Same applies to NetSuite (SuiteAnalytics Connect), Dynamics 365 (Dataverse + Synapse Link), and SAP Business One.
Do we need a data warehouse, or can Power BI work directly off the ERP?
For shops under ~50 staff with one ERP, direct connection works. For multi-source environments (ERP + CRM + inventory + e-comm), we recommend a thin Azure SQL warehouse to handle joins and historize. Cheaper than people imagine.
How long until the first useful dashboard?
3-4 weeks for a starter scorecard on a single ERP. 8-12 weeks for a multi-source model with executive + operational + sales-rep layers. Anyone promising "two days" is selling a templated dashboard, not the work.
Will my plant managers actually use it?
That's why Stage 05 (training + handoff) is built into Stage 04. Operational dashboards are co-designed with the people who'll live in them. Training sessions are recorded as Loom videos. Adoption is the deliverable, not the artifact.
Ready to compress your close?
30-minute fit call. We'll review your ERP, your monthly-close pain, and what a working scorecard would look like in your shape.