How This Global Manufacturer Ditched Cognos and Reclaimed 13K Hours with Sigma

The Challenge

Outgrowing legacy systems

Walter Surface Technologies had outgrown its legacy Cognos reporting system. After a series of acquisitions, data was fragmented across multiple ERPs, making it time-consuming to view consolidated sales performance.

• Sales reps relied on outdated, static reports from Cognos, often requiring complex SQL to make any updates.
• Finance and BI teams were inundated with manual report requests.
• New acquisitions took months to integrate due to inconsistent data structures and no connection to a centralized warehouse.

Sales reps were becoming accountants.
No one trusted the numbers.
_{— Ansley Coelho, Manager of Corporate Development}

The Solution

Walter adopted Sigma

Walter adopted Sigma alongside Snowflake to modernize its analytics stack.

Sigma’s spreadsheet UI empowered 150+ sales reps to explore their own performance data without writing SQL.

Input tables allowed the business to update rep territory mappings and sales allocations instantly, without relying on the ERP.

Sigma became the single source of truth for live sales dashboards, POS data, and acquisition performance.

We were never able to see our true top-line revenue before. Now, we can share it with everyone in the business.
_{— Ansley Coelho, Manager of Corporate Development}

The Results

Real-Time Sales Visibility

All sales reports now update daily, giving reps and leadership instant insight into performance vs. budget, YoY growth, and declining accounts.

Time Savings Across Teams

Sigma eliminated months of work per acquisition and reclaimed ~13,000 productive hours by replacing static reports with self-serve dashboards.

Operational Agility

With Sigma and Snowflake, Walter can quickly onboard new businesses, unify reporting across brands, and prepare for financial events like private equity exits.

Key Outcomes

• ~13K hours saved for the sales team
• Sales data integration reduced from months to days
• Cognos and Power BI replaced with a single, modern platform
• POS and Salesforce data are fully visible across all teams

What’s Next

Walter is expanding Sigma usage into:

• SG&A and financial statement analysis
• CapEx tracking and target-to-actual variance reporting
• Other datasets, including purchase and sales orders

It’s night and day with Sigma. Sales reps finally trust their data, and leadership can drive the business forward with confidence.
_{—Ansley Coelho, Manager of Corporate Development, Walter Surface Technologies}

‍Read more about financial analysis in Sigma.