Their challenge

LSC Communications is a $3.5 billion commercial printing company in the process of divesting from their parent organization. With 17 source systems, 35 TB of data, nine data marts, and thousands of integrations and reports, LSC’s current data model is disparate and complex.  

Instead of imitating their parent company, LSC aims to build an integrated model that will drive value and scale with their business.

Our solution

LSC knew they needed to modernize and issued an RFP to find the right partner. After evaluating several companies, LSC chose MCA Connect due to our business intelligence capabilities, manufacturing and distribution expertise, and success with similar projects. Our response also illuminated the broader need for a robust data strategy supported by scalable real-time intelligence.

Our Manufacturing Intelligence team completed a Microsoft DPi30 Solution Assessment. LSC then decided to migrate their data while uncovering new opportunities along the way. As part of this engagement, we:  

To date, we’ve migrated services and thousands of reports into Power BI, a competitive takeover from SAP Business Objects, Qlik, Informatica, Incorta, Erwin, and IBM WebSphere.  

After winning the business intelligence/data model work, we secured additional projects that are currently underway. These projects focus on logistics and financial accruals Power Apps as well as supply chain planning/scheduling visibility and resiliency.

Our team will deliver a manufacturing and supply chain data analytics foundation on Azure Synapse. We’ll also provide an actionable roadmap and estimated level of effort for full modernization of LSC’s data and application environments.

Meanwhile, our Modern Platform Management team will provide ongoing optimization and support.

LSC appreciates MCA Connect’s thought leadership and focus on business outcomes which became evident when they called for help resuming plant operations after a homegrown application failed.

“We appreciate MCA Connect’s guidance on this project, as well as Microsoft’s investment and support. The MCA Connect team gets the challenges we are up against and we’re confident they’re the right partner for the job.”

– Mark Hanson, VP, Cloud and Analytics

Customer Impact

• Reduced errors and improved data accuracy by creating a more efficient salient data ingestion process.
• Decreased duplicity and optimized data size by cutting number of tables in supply chain and inventory data marts by 43%, reducing data size by over 300 GB.
• Ability to make more informed decisions with a data retention strategy that ensures system only stores relevant data for analysis.
• Streamlined, simplified reporting with critical reports in Power BI
• Development of organizational BI champions equipped to meet evolving needs of the organization and drive new development.
• Improved visibility and supply chain resiliency with solid foundation for manufacturing and supply chain analytics 

Microsoft Impact

• ACR: Up to $30k per month
• Licenses: Rolling out Power BI to hundreds of users
• Programs: Dpi30, Supply Chain, PIE Azure Everywhere, AAAP Pre-Sales, and AAAP Post-Sales