TerraVest Cuts Reporting Time from 3 Weeks to 30 Minutes
Client: TerraVest Industries
Project: Automated reporting and master data management powered by Microsoft Fabric and Power Platform
Building a Fabric-powered Data Warehouse and Master Data Management Solution in Power Platform to Unify Reporting Across Subsidiaries
TerraVest Industries is a market-leading manufacturer serving niche infrastructure markets across North America. With more than 50 operating companies under its umbrella, TerraVest produces everything from propane and NH3 transport vehicles to home heating products, energy processing equipment, and fiberglass storage tanks.
As the business grew through acquisition, one thing became clear: bringing together data from decentralized ERP systems was slowing leadership down.
“Every month it could take us three weeks just to assemble a single report—and some of the information was still missing or inaccurate,” says Jean-François Desbiens, IT Director at TerraVest.
One director was spending up to three weeks every month exporting data from multiple ERPs (including SAP, Epicor, Jeeves, QuickBooks, and others), cleaning spreadsheets, and reconciling vendor/item differences across companies. Free-text fields, inconsistent naming (sometimes in multiple languages), and non-standard business rules compounded the problem.
The Plan: Build for Today, and for the Next Acquisition
TerraVest didn’t want to centralize ERPs and mandate migrations to their subsidiaries. Instead, they wanted a data foundation that respected autonomy while enabling enterprise visibility. Working with Convverge, the teams quickly aligned on an end-to-end solution built on Microsoft Fabric—one that could deliver reliable reporting without disrupting how individual companies operate.
Convverge started by sitting down with the business to understand exactly how reports were being built. They followed the manual steps, saw where data was being massaged, and translated that knowledge into a design the technical team could automate. From there, Convverge worked hand-in-hand with Jean-François’s group to connect into each ERP system, building data pipelines that could pull data daily and apply the same rules and calculations that had once lived in spreadsheets.
Rather than simply replacing the old process, the teams collaborated to design a modern data warehouse with a clear “data dictionary,” defining what columns and fields each report should contain. That warehouse became the foundation for flexible, real-time reporting in Power BI, while still leaving the option open for teams to use Excel or other familiar tools.
One piece of the puzzle couldn’t be solved with pipelines alone: inconsistent vendor and item data across subsidiaries. For that, Convverge built a Master Data Management app in Power Apps. The interface gave business users—not just developers—the ability to standardize vendors and items and to control the configurations that shaped reporting. That stewardship layer ensured the solution would stay accurate and scalable without adding IT bottlenecks.
Right away, Convverge knew what to build. We challenged them on tech choices and they were always a step ahead.
The Results: Real-Time, Reliable, and Adopted
For TerraVest, the impact was immediate. The director who once spent nearly three weeks every month compiling spreadsheets now has reports at her fingertips in real time. What used to be a full-time burden has become a thirty-minute task, freeing her to focus on higher-value priorities.
But the shift wasn’t just about time savings. With data now flowing daily into a central warehouse, leadership can compare information across subsidiaries on equal footing. Inconsistent rules and mismatched vendor data that once obscured the picture are now standardized, giving executives confidence in the numbers. That clarity has already paid off—at one point, the system flagged a $2 million accounts payable error that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
The new solution has also taken hold beyond head office. Though originally built for enterprise reporting, the subsidiaries themselves quickly began using the dashboards to run their own operations. Instead of digging through ERP screens, managers now have reliable insight delivered through familiar tools like Power BI.
Perhaps most importantly, the solution was designed with TerraVest’s future in mind. As the company continues to acquire new businesses—often one or two per year—onboarding their data no longer requires months of integration. In many cases, it’s a matter of days or weeks, with repeatable patterns for ERPs the system already knows. That means each new acquisition can start contributing to the bigger picture almost immediately.
What began as a proof of concept quickly grew to three times its original scope, not because of project creep, but because stakeholders across the business saw the value. With finance and revenue data next on the roadmap, TerraVest now has a data foundation built to grow as fast as the company itself.
Curious how a modern data foundation could transform reporting in your organization?
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