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Case Study

How Goodwill of Colorado Built a Future-Proof Data Warehouse

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Goodwill of Colorado
Goodwill of Colorado| Colorado Springs, CO

Goodwill of Colorado provides career development resources and life-skills training for more than 100,000 Coloradans with disadvantages each year — including military veterans, seniors, youth, and individuals who have a disability or barrier to employment.

Through its thrift stores, donations, corporate partnerships, and recycling processes, Goodwill has worked for over a century to ensure individuals have access to career and life pathways that allow them to live to their fullest potential. Eide Bailly worked with Goodwill of Colorado to build a data foundation that could continue to grow with the organization and support its vital mission.

KEY RESULTS
  • Increased operational efficiency
  • Improved reporting accuracy and usability
  • Retired on-premises infrastructure
  • Accelerated access to historical business data
  • Reduced licensing costs and expanded adoption
Nonprofit

Let us help you with strategy, compliance, and growth so you can focus on fostering your mission.

Data Warehousing

Centralize and organize your data into a central source of truth.

Who We Are

Eide Bailly is a nationally ranked accounting and advisory firm bringing financial, operational, and technical solutions to middle market and high-growth organizations.

About the Client
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Job Seekers Trained & Mentored
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Colorado Counties Served
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Employees

Challenge

A merger between organizations created the need for a new data infrastructure and a future-proof reporting system.

Goodwill of Colorado was created after a 2019 merger of Goodwill Industries of Denver and Discover Goodwill of Southern & Western Colorado. The merger created an opportunity for Goodwill to serve more Coloradans; however, it also revealed limitations in the organization’s existing systems and processes.


Goodwill of Colorado relied on an end-of-life reporting system, Excel spreadsheets, and Tableau for operational reporting. Without a proper data cleansing process, their reports were time-consuming to create, hard to understand, and did not export correctly. Additionally, the new combined organization needed to move its point of sale (POS) data into a data warehouse to preserve historical records before transitioning to a new POS system.

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Multiple systems and reporting tools.
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    Time consuming data preparation.
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      Lack of infrastructure to handle past, present, and future data.

        Strategy

        A tailored solution built for the future.

        Our team worked with Goodwill of Colorado to design a roadmap for the future, allowing them to restructure their data and capture historical data from a system they’d soon be deprecating.


        Analysis & Design

        We conducted internal stakeholder interviews to better understand where the organization was and where they wanted to go. Using this information, we created an informed, multi-phase roadmap to solve their historical data problem and allow for better operational reporting throughout the organization.


        Data Infrastructure

        Our tool-agnostic approach allowed us to meet the client’s needs using the best solutions for their unique situation. We designed a solution for Goodwill of Colorado using technology that will support them long-term, including Azure Data Factory, DBT, GitHub, Snowflake, and PowerBI.


        Metadata Framework

        We took a complex, time-consuming data process and made it dramatically simpler for Goodwill of Colorado. Instead of spending 4–5 hours and writing more than 100 lines of code, their team can complete the same process in five minutes with a single line of code.

        three coworkers discussing something during a meeting

        "Our data drives our decision-making. Eide Bailly's solution has made it easier and faster for our people to access the information they need, when they need it."


        — Shawn Davis, Director of IT | Goodwill of Colorado

        Impact

        A custom, scalable solution designed to provide better reporting and support growth.

        Reports that once took several hours to generate are now available in seconds, using the company’s financial formatting standard. With faster decision-making backed by accurate and reliable data, Goodwill of Colorado is now in a position to easily adapt to future growth.


        “Eide Bailly didn't just build our data infrastructure,” said Shawn Davis, Director of IT at Goodwill of Colorado. “They took the time to ensure our technical team and our end-users understand the solution and can continue to support it in the future.”

        WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
        Our data drives our decision-making. Eide Bailly's solution has made it easier and faster for our people to access the information they need, when they need it.
        Shawn Davis
        Director of ITGoodwill of Colorado
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