Industrial distributor eliminates 3 days of monthly manual reporting with Power Automate and Power BI
Eight staff spending 3 days every month building reports from 12 disconnected Excel files, and purchase approvals lost in email chains. We automated the entire workflow in 6 weeks.
The Challenge
Our client's commercial and finance teams were drowning in manual work: monthly sales reports assembled from 12 Excel files, purchase approvals via email chains that regularly got lost, and zero real-time visibility into margins or inventory. Leadership was making decisions on data that was 2–3 weeks old.
- Monthly reporting consumed 3 full days across 8 employees
- Purchase approvals via email — 4-day average cycle, frequent delays
- Sales and margin data 2–3 weeks old by the time it reached management
- 12 disconnected Excel files across commercial, finance and logistics teams
- No real-time visibility into inventory levels or profitability by product line
Our Solution
Process Mapping & Architecture
Ran a 3-day discovery sprint with commercial, finance and logistics stakeholders to map all existing workflows, identify automation opportunities and define the Power BI data model.
Power BI Real-Time Dashboards
Built a suite of Power BI dashboards — sales by region and salesperson, margin by product line, and inventory alerts — connected directly to the ERP via API using DirectQuery for near real-time data.
Purchase Approval Automation
Replaced email-based approvals with a Power Automate flow triggered by a SharePoint form. Requests are routed by value threshold, approvers receive mobile notifications, and all decisions are logged automatically.
Automated Reporting Pipeline
Eliminated the 3-day manual process with a scheduled Power Automate pipeline: daily data extraction from the ERP at 6am, transformation into SharePoint Lists, and automatic Power BI report distribution to management.
Training & Adoption
Delivered 2 days of hands-on training for commercial, finance and management teams. Built a SharePoint help site with recorded walkthroughs and an internal helpdesk for the first 30 days post-launch.
Results
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