Canusa Wood is a Vancouver-based company that has grown into one of North America’s leading importers of hardwood plywood, and panel products. Its extensive supply chain encompasses dozens of suppliers from around the world, enabling Canusa Wood to offer a vast array of top-quality materials suitable for various applications such as interior, exterior, marine, and industrial applications.

Despite operating with a small team of 25+ staff, Canusa Wood generates an impressive annual revenue of several million per employee.

CHALLENGES

One of the most significant challenges faced by Canusa Wood is effective inventory management. As a company that buys material from multiple mills across the world and distributes its inventory across Canada and the United States, they encounter a considerable lead time for fulfilling their orders.

To improve its inventory and sales management processes, Canusa Wood adopted a new, specialized ERP software called Agility four years ago. This system is designed for building supply distributors to effectively manage inventory, facilitate purchasing and sales order management.

Over the years, Canusa Wood accumulated vast amounts of valuable data through its ERP system. To leverage this data and gain relevant insights, they wanted to explore the use of business intelligence tools. Their goal was to create sophisticated reports that will allow their sales and buying teams to make informed decisions and enhance the customer journey.

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SOLUTION

Due to the limitations of the Agility ERP software, Canusa Wood required more advanced reporting capabilities. To address this need, they invested in PRO2SQL, a tool that facilitates the data transfer from Agility to an Azure-hosted SQL database. In addition, their adoption of Microsoft 365 made Power BI a perfect choice as their Business Intelligence tool.

As a small company with no IT staff, Canusa Wood turned to Softlanding to help them set up their SQL database and convert their raw data into digestible information via Power BI.

The Softlanding team built the SQL queries for Power BI and helped Canusa decipher and interpret the data they wanted to see in their Power BI reports.

Moreover, Softlanding provided training to the key project stakeholders but also to a co-op student that Canusa hired to accelerate their data utilization.

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RESULTS

  • People Empowerment

To avoid the cost and time associated with hiring consultants for report creation, Canusa Wood wanted to empower its teams to build reports independently. With the implementation of Power BI, every team member can now create custom reports, granting salespeople the ability to access real-time information and make more informed decisions to optimize the customer journey.

  • New Business Opportunities

By implementing a SQL database and Power BI, Canusa Wood has unlocked new potential, including the ability to introduce automated pricing into their system. Salespeople can now easily access pricing information for any product, empowering them to conduct real-time price analysis and import pricing data for thousands of SKUs and branches into their ERP.

  • Enhanced Productivity

By centralizing data in their system, the sales team can now collaborate more effectively with sales support. With Power BI, every team member has access to the information they need to make quick and informed decisions. Moreover, as they learn more and market conditions change, they can modify their reporting to suit their evolving needs.

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“The Softlanding team has been exceptional in interpreting our data and understanding our unique needs. As a supplier of building materials, we deal with different units of measure such as square meters, square feet, and cubic meters that we need to convert into crates and pieces. This can make data interpretation quite challenging. Softlanding demonstrated an in-depth understanding of our industry-specific measurements, making our data easier to comprehend and analyze. Additionally, Softlanding was outstanding in its project management approach, and we were always kept informed about the progress of the project. This level of transparency and communication gave us peace of mind and took the weight off our shoulders. As a result, we were able to complete the project on time and under budget.”

Jim Bennett, VP Finance & Operations, Canusa Wood

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