How APS Turned Excel Chaos Into a Single Source of Truth and 97% TAT in Month-End Reporting

APS had grown into a multi-site MRO with operations in the US, Brazil, and Malaysia. But their data and reporting hadn’t kept up.

The reality inside Finance and Sales

• Siloed and disparate systems across regions  

• Dirty data and inconsistent definitions (customers, parts, regions, products)  

• Scattered information with no unified view of performance  

• Month-end closing and reporting that took an entire month  

• Sales targets and commission structures that “didn’t make sense” to the team  

• Heavy reliance on manual Excel work—including one master file with 25 tabs

For the CFO, this meant:

• No reliable 80/20 view of where profit and growth were really coming from  

• Limited ability to compare performance across facilities  

• Slow, painful financial consolidation  

• Constant firefighting instead of strategic decision-making

For Sales leadership, it meant:

• Limited visibility into which customers and product lines were truly driving results  

• Targets and commissions that felt disconnected from reality  

• No easy way to track performance vs budget or vs peers

APS didn’t just need dashboards. They needed to fix the foundation.

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The Requirement: Business Analytics and Financial Consolidation That Actually Work

When APS engaged Aero NextGen, the CFO’s ask was clear:

“We need a single source of truth for Finance and Sales—across all facilities.”

Specifically, they were looking for:

• A business analytics platform that could support Finance, Sales, and leadership  

• A cloud-based data warehouse that could centralize and clean data from all regions  

• Power BI dashboards tailored to:  

• Financial consolidation and month-end reporting  

• Sales performance, 80/20 analysis, and commission tracking

• A structure that would finally get them out of Excel chaos

This is exactly the type of challenge our Solution Finder is built to solve.

Instead of launching a long, generic BI project, APS used Aero NextGen’s Solution Finder to shortcut to the right partner.

Step 1: Understand the CFO’s Reality

We worked directly with the CFO to capture:

• Current systems and data sources across the US, Brazil, and Malaysia  

• Pain points in financial consolidation, reporting, and sales analytics  

• The scale and complexity of existing Excel-based processes  

• The need for both strategic visibility and operational reporting

Step 2: Shortlist Specialized Analytics Providers

From our vetted network, we identified a solution provider with:

• Deep experience in business analytics and financial reporting  

• Expertise in data warehousing and cloud architectures  

• Proven ability to deliver Power BI dashboards for Finance and Sales  

• Experience working with multi-site, global operations

Step 3: Matchmaking and Implementation Alignment

Through Solution Finder, APS was matched with this provider and aligned on:

• Rebuilding their data warehouse in the cloud  

• Data standardization and harmonization across all facilities  

• Dashboard design for Finance and Sales leadership

This wasn’t a “plug in a BI tool and hope it works” project. It was a structured transformation of how APS used data to run the business.

The matched provider delivered a two-layer solution:

1. Cloud-Based Data Warehouse

First, they rebuilt APS’s data foundation:

• Centralized data from all facilities (US, Brazil, Malaysia) into a cloud data warehouse  

• Standardized and harmonized key dimensions:  

• Customers  

• Parts and product lines  

• Regions and facilities  

• Currencies, accounts, and financial structures

• Cleaned and normalized historical data so trends and comparisons were reliable

This created the single source of truth APS had been missing.

2. Power BI Dashboards for Finance and Sales

On top of the warehouse, they built Power BI dashboards tailored to:

• Finance  

• Month-end financial consolidation  

• P&L by region, facility, product line, and customer  

• Cash, margin, and profitability views  

• Variance vs budget and vs prior periods

• Sales  

• Performance by region, customer, and product line  

• 80/20 analysis to identify top revenue and margin drivers  

• Individual and team performance vs targets  

• Commission visibility and alignment with actual results

For the first time, APS leadership could see the business clearly—without opening a 25-tab spreadsheet.

The results were significant and tangible.

1. Month-End Close: From 1 Month to 2 Days

• Financial reporting that used to take a full month was now delivered in 2 days  

• Finance teams saw 75% efficiency gains  

• Less time spent chasing data and reconciling spreadsheets  

• More time available for analysis, planning, and strategic support

2. Significant Year-Over-Year Sales Increase

With clear visibility into performance and the 80/20 drivers, APS:

• Shifted focus from pure new customer acquisition to upselling into multi-million dollar portfolios  

• Identified and doubled down on their most profitable customers and product lines  

• Enabled Sales leadership to manage based on facts, not assumptions

The result: 15% YoY sales growth driven by smarter, data-backed decisions.

3. True Performance Management and Healthy Competition

The new dashboards also changed how the Sales team worked:

• Individual reps could see their performance vs budget  

• Teams could compare performance across regions and colleagues  

• Commissions and targets were easier to understand and trust

This transparency:

• Increased motivation  

• Created healthy competition  

• Improved alignment between Sales, Finance, and leadership

4. A Real Single Source of Truth

For the CEO, CFO, and CCO, the biggest win was strategic:

• One version of the truth across all facilities  

• Consistent metrics and definitions  

• Reliable data to support decisions on growth, investment, and resource allocation

Why This Matters for MRO CEOs, CFOs, and CCOs

If you’re running or overseeing an MRO today, you might be in a similar situation:

• Multiple facilities and systems  

• Finance buried in manual consolidation  

• Sales performance that’s hard to measure or steer  

• No clear 80/20 view of where profit and growth really come from

APS’s journey shows what’s possible when you:

• Fix the data foundation with a proper warehouse  

• Standardize and harmonize data across regions  

• Layer on analytics that serve Finance, Sales, and leadership  

• Use the 80/20 rule to focus on what truly moves the needle

And you don’t have to figure out which provider can do this on your own.

Use Solution Finder to Build Your Own MRO Analytics Backbone

Aero NextGen’s Solution Finder is designed to help MRO leaders like you:

• Translate pain points (Excel chaos, slow month-end, unclear sales performance) into clear solution requirements  

• Get matched with vetted providers in analytics, data warehousing, and performance management  

• Avoid wasting time on generic BI projects that don’t understand MRO reality

In APS’s case, we worked directly with the CFO to ensure the solution addressed real financial and commercial needs—not just IT architecture.

You can do the same.

Ready to Move Beyond 25-Tab Excel Files?

If you’re a CEO, CFO, or CCO of an MRO and you’re:

• Tired of slow, manual month-end closes  

• Frustrated by inconsistent data across facilities  

• Unsure where your real 80/20 profit drivers are  

• Ready to manage performance with a true single source of truth

You don’t need another spreadsheet.

Take the Solution Finder survey and get matched with analytics and data partners who understand MRO, financial consolidation, and performance management.  

Turn your data from a liability into a growth engine—just like APS did.

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