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Walter Surface Technologies had reached a breaking point with its legacy Cognos reporting system. After a series of acquisitions, the company found itself with data scattered across multiple ERPs, each with its own quirks and inconsistencies. Because there was no connection to a centralized warehouse and inconsistent data structures across systems, consolidating performance data was slow, manual, and often unreliable.
Sales reps were stuck waiting on static reports generated from Cognos, which quickly went out of date. Making even minor adjustments required complex SQL queries, something most reps weren’t equipped to handle. Instead of focusing on customer relationships and revenue growth, many found themselves spending hours reconciling spreadsheets.
The Finance and BI teams weren’t spared either. They were inundated with constant requests for custom reports, leaving little time for strategic work. Onboarding new acquisitions only added to the strain. Without standardized data and centralized reporting, integrating new businesses could take months before results were visible in company dashboards.
“Sales reps were becoming accountants. No one trusted the numbers,” said Ansley Coelho, Manager of Corporate Development.
Sales reps were becoming accountants.
No one trusted the numbers.
— Ansley Coelho, Manager of Corporate Development
To break free from the cycle of manual reporting and fragmented data, Walter adopted Sigma alongside Snowflake to modernize its analytics stack.
With Sigma’s spreadsheet-like interface, more than 150 sales reps could finally explore their own performance data directly—without ever writing SQL. This shift gave them autonomy and immediate access to the metrics they cared about most. Input tables made it simple to update rep territory mappings and sales allocations on the fly, eliminating the need to wait for changes to flow through an ERP.
Sigma became the company’s single source of truth. Live dashboards consolidated sales performance, POS data, and acquisition results into one trusted view. For the first time, Walter could see its true top-line revenue across the business.
“We were never able to see our true top-line revenue before,” said Coelho. “Now, we can share it with everyone in the business.”
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
Sales reports now refresh daily, giving both reps and leadership instant access to key metrics: performance against budget, year-over-year growth, and accounts that may be declining.
By replacing static Cognos reports with Sigma’s self-serve dashboards, Walter reclaimed nearly 13,000 productive hours. Acquisitions that once required months of manual work to integrate are now brought online in a fraction of the time.
With Sigma and Snowflake, Walter can quickly onboard new businesses, unify reporting across all brands, and prepare more effectively for major financial events such as private equity exits.
Walter’s success with Sigma is only the beginning. The company is now expanding usage into SG&A and financial statement analysis, CapEx tracking, and target-to-actual variance reporting. Other datasets, such as purchase and sales orders, are also being brought into Sigma—extending the platform’s value even further.
“It’s night and day with Sigma,” said Coelho. “Sales reps finally trust their data, and leadership can drive the business forward with confidence.”
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.
