When this furniture company needed business intelligence, it found Sigma on Databricks

‍We spoke with Daniel, senior manager of business intelligence at Million Dollar Baby, a modern nursery furniture company. The team built a data app in Sigma on Databricks that powers their entire finance and accounting process, and explains how Sigma has changed how the entire company does its work. 

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We’re a family-run company making thoughtfully designed, modern nursery furniture since 1990. If there’s a crib that looks like it belongs in a design magazine, there’s a good chance it came from us.

We’re all about helping parents create beautiful, safe spaces for their families—and behind the scenes, we treat our business the same way. We believe in building things right, growing with purpose, and using data to make smarter decisions at every turn.

Teams in finance, sales, and procurement were stuck in Excel or wrangling outdated dashboards. 

I’ve been with Million Dollar Baby Co. for nearly a decade. I started on the supply chain side, where data wasn’t just helpful—it was everything. Two years ago, I stepped into a centralized business intelligence role to help scale that mindset across the company. That’s when we really began leveling up our analytics game, as well as when Sigma came into the picture.

Where we started (and why it had to change)

Let’s rewind to the start of that transformation. Our tech stack was cluttered with legacy systems. Teams in finance, sales, and procurement were stuck in Excel or wrangling outdated dashboards. Data lived everywhere—mostly in our Enterprise Resource Planning system, but also across other SaaS platforms we’d picked up over time. 

To get a full picture, teams had to manually move data, write custom code, and basically cross their fingers that nothing would break. Even managing simple formulas—things you could do easily in Excel—became unnecessarily complex. That overhead created friction and kept business users from owning their own insights.

We spent hundreds of hours recreating data sets and visualizations to extract insights.

Even Excel itself, while flexible, brought its own chaos. Data sprawl. Broken files. Endless version control issues. The cost of inefficiency was piling up. We spent hundreds of hours recreating data sets and visualizations to extract insights, which led to lengthy planning and review cycles. 

We knew we needed a better way.

We didn’t need another dashboard. We needed a revolution.

Our digital transformation journey with Databricks started back in 2023. The legacy tools we were using weren’t solving our needs and were draining our resources. Databricks’s SQL warehousing, on the other hand, was much newer, and we were really drawn to its data science and engineering features. 

Sigma works natively with Databricks. 

But we knew that modern data engineering was only half the battle. The real challenge was getting that information into the hands of the people who actually needed it—most of whom aren’t technical. The tool had to unlock all that data for them, so we needed something intuitive and something our users would actually use. Excel familiarity was non-negotiable. 

With Sigma, we could finally break the cycle of data exports.

That’s why Sigma really hit the mark: it’s a spreadsheet-native interface that works natively with Databricks, giving business users the power to build and interact with live data apps. No code. No bottlenecks. With Sigma, we could finally break the cycle of data exports and rebuild our BI layer on a foundation that actually made sense. It felt like giving our teams superpowers—access, speed, and confidence in the numbers.

What happened when we put data in everyone’s hands

We launched three minimum viable products out of the gate. 

Gross Profit was first, since it spans everything—from revenue down to contribution margin— and incorporates a range of unique inputs. It essentially forms the top layer of our P&L, and getting it right was critical. We focused on automating the process and designing a user-friendly interface to make the data accessible and actionable from day one.

With Sigma, we could finally break the cycle of data exports and rebuild our BI layer on a foundation that actually made sense.

Next came our budget vs. actuals process. Our old budgeting system was fragmented, with high-level data locked in the ERP and everything else managed manually. Now, with Sigma, we perform BVA at a granular level, reviewing it daily and weekly to track trends, close gaps, and forecast outcomes more effectively.

While the heavy modeling still happens in Databricks, Sigma gives our teams the UI to see, interact with, and act on the data. Writeback lets users update forecasts directly, with changes flowing into governed Databricks tables in real time. No more version issues, no more workarounds. Just a single, live dashboard driving faster, smarter decisions.

Writeback lets users update forecasts directly, with changes flowing into governed Databricks tables in real time.

Then, we worked on P&L. With all the inputs already live and automated, we could finally deliver a full, digestible financial picture. It’s been transformative for leadership.

But the impact didn’t stop with Finance.

We streamlined our biannual line review process, cutting hundreds of hours of manual work into a single dashboard with dynamic filters. Brand managers used to spend weeks building slides. Now they just screenshot what they need. Same goes for monthly reporting—what used to take teams 10+ hours now takes minutes. We’re not just saving time. We’re changing how people work.

When the team sees the “why,” the change sticks

We went from 10+ sales managers each building separate spreadsheets to a unified app where everyone sees the same numbers.

Change management is no joke. People get attached to old ways, especially when they’ve made them work for years. But showing—not just telling—the why behind a new process is critical.

One big win? Our budget process. We went from 10+ sales managers each building separate spreadsheets to a unified app where everyone sees the same numbers. One source of truth. One place to make decisions. It’s not just easier. It’s smarter.

We’re not just saving time. We’re changing how people work.

And now, they’re asking for more. Once users saw the time savings and clarity, the engagement skyrocketed.

We’re not done with Sigma yet

We’ve rolled out six use cases so far. In finance alone, we’ve cut 100+ hours per month of repetitive work. More importantly, 80% of that time is now spent on higher-value activities like digging into insights, planning, or forecasting.

But we’re just getting started.

Sigma gave us the tool we didn’t know we needed—and now can’t live without. 

Next up, we’ll develop marketing performance dashboards, real-time campaign ROI, dynamic pricing models, and promotional elasticity tracking. All powered by Sigma on top of Databricks. All built to move fast, scale smart, and stay secure.

This isn’t just about better dashboards. It’s about changing the pace of decision-making across the business. We’ve moved from monthly reviews to weekly insights. And soon, we’ll be operating in real-time—no delays, no guesswork.

What I’d tell any data leader on the fence

In Finance alone, we’ve cut 100+ hours per month of repetitive work.

Sigma gave us the tool we didn’t know we needed—and now can’t live without. It’s how we’re turning our data strategy into actual business impact. And it’s how we’re empowering every team to move faster, go deeper, and make decisions that truly move the needle.

If you're stuck massaging data instead of making moves, trust me—there’s a better way. We found it with Sigma.

Read more from Sigma’s CFO on FP&A in Sigma.

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