ABC Supply delivers self-service analytics using Dremio to organize domain data and accelerate development

The Customer:

ABC Supply is the largest wholesale distributor of roofing materials in North America and a key distributor of siding, windows, and other exterior and interior building products. Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Beloit, Wisconsin, the company is dedicated to serving professional contractors with a broad product range, excellent service, and strong values of respect and teamwork. ABC Supply operates over 800 locations nationwide and continues to grow, driven by a commitment to helping contractors build their businesses and achieve success.

The Challenge:

ABC Supply faced significant challenges with scalability and performance in their data management systems. The direct connection between Tableau and Snowflake resulted in slowness, timeouts, and lost connections, complicating the management of large multi-year data extracts and causing frequent failures. This situation led to a dependency on the data engineering team for any new or modified Tableau dashboards, creating bottlenecks and slowing down development.

Additionally, the lack of a consistent, efficient, and metadata-driven process for managing data pipelines made it difficult to ensure the creation and maintenance of enterprise data sets. There was also a need for better organization and accessibility of data, as well as a centralized repository for shareable code to avoid duplication and ensure consistency across various dashboards and reports. These challenges hindered ABC Supply's ability to effectively manage and utilize their data to support growth and decision-making.

The Solution:

To solve these challenges, ABC Supply implemented a more robust data architecture that included the introduction of Dremio. This platform improved data management by organizing data into domains and providing a centralized repository for shareable code, which enhanced consistency across dashboards and reports. By connecting Tableau to Dremio instead of directly to Snowflake, they addressed performance issues, eliminating slowness, timeouts, and lost connections.

Additionally, ABC Supply developed a metadata-driven process to manage their data pipelines, ensuring efficient and consistent creation of enterprise data sets. This approach reduced their dependency on the data engineering team, allowing BI deveopers and business analysts to access well-organized data more independently and efficiently. These solutions streamlined data management, improved performance, and supported ABC Supply's continued growth and data-driven decision-making.

"[with] Dremio performance and it being faster, and no longer depending on data engineering, that was an acceleration of our turnaround time...Dremio provides easily accessible and understandable data sets for their ad hoc analysis needs. Dremio also enables us to use active directory groups to govern who can access which spaces so that both our BI development and BA self-service users can only access what they need."

Stephen Brehm

Manager of Business Intelligence, ABC Supply

The Results:

The implementation of this solution led to several positive results for ABC Supply. Firstly, connecting Tableau to Dremio significantly improved performance, eliminating issues like slowness, timeouts, and lost connections. This allowed for more reliable and efficient data management, particularly with large multi-year data extracts.

Secondly, the metadata-driven process for managing data pipelines ensured the efficient and consistent creation of enterprise data sets. This reduced the dependency on the data engineering team, accelerating the development of new dashboards and modifications to existing ones. Consequently, BI developers and business analysts gained easier and more independent access to well-organized data, enhancing their ability to perform ad hoc queries and make data-driven decisions. Overall, these improvements streamlined data management processes and supported ABC Supply’s continued growth and operational efficiency.