Meet Our Customer
VIRA Insight designs, engineers, manufactures and installs retail environments, fixtures and displays. Its work connects the commercial needs of retailers and brands with the operational demands of manufacturing, distribution and installation.
Behind those operations, information was spread across Salesforce CRM, Epicor ERP, SharePoint, SQL Server and custom APIs. Sales opportunities, accounts receivable, shipping and backlog each contributed part of the business picture. VIRA wanted a trusted, connected view of that information—and conversational access to trusted enterprise metrics.
NorthBay was engaged to deliver that foundation on Snowflake, bringing together enterprise data, consistent business definitions and production reporting.
The Challenge
VIRA’s business systems held the information its teams needed, but that information was difficult to bring together consistently.
Salesforce was isolated from backend operational databases. Epicor, SQL Server, SharePoint and custom APIs operated as separate sources, leaving departments with conflicting versions of core metrics. Building a consolidated view required repeated spreadsheet exports, manual preparation and reconciliation.
Those reporting cycles were slow and prone to error. Time spent assembling data reduced the time available to understand sales opportunities, receivables, shipping performance and backlog. The same fragmentation also made it difficult to establish a reliable starting point for advanced analytics and AI.
The brief was to replace siloed reporting with a governed enterprise data foundation: automate ingestion, refine data into trusted business metrics, deliver priority reports, and create a practical path toward natural-language access.
The Vision
NorthBay designed a Snowflake-powered lakehouse that brings enterprise sources into a common, governed environment. A layered data architecture separates raw ingestion from data integration and business-approved reporting, while a semantic layer gives those metrics a consistent meaning.
A single foundation across enterprise systems
Snowflake OpenFlow supports automated ingestion from Salesforce, Epicor, SharePoint and custom APIs. DBT transformations organize data into Bronze, Silver and Gold layers: raw source data lands in Bronze, is cleaned and conformed in Silver, and becomes curated business metrics in Gold. This provides a repeatable route from source systems to reporting.
Business meaning built into the data
A Cortex Analyst semantic layer aligns core KPI definitions across teams. Validated Gold metrics provide a consistent basis for business reporting and natural-language queries. Power BI serves executive dashboards and self-service reporting. Building on the Opportunities data, NorthBay also built a Cortex Agent within Snowflake Intelligence to provide semantic reporting through natural-language questions.
Governed by design
The architecture combines automated transformations, shared enterprise definitions and role-based access across the data layers. NorthBay’s end-to-end solution architecture was reviewed and approved by VIRA before production rollout.
A governed Snowflake foundation supports production reporting and natural-language analysis of Opportunities data through Snowflake Intelligence and a Cortex Agent.
AI Agents Built with Snowflake Agent Studio
NorthBay built five distinct AI agents for VIRA Insight using Snowflake Agent Studio. Together, these agents extend the Snowflake Intelligence experience across sales coaching, sales knowledge, Gold data, backlog and opportunities, enabling business users to explore information and ask follow-up questions in everyday language.
- VIRA Sales Coach
- Gold Data Agent
- Backlog Agent
- VIRA Sales Knowledge Agent
- Opportunities Agent
For semantic reporting, the governed data foundation and shared business definitions provide a consistent basis for interpreting answers. The Opportunities Agent applies this approach to Opportunities data, connecting natural-language questions to the semantic layer and complementing the delivered Power BI report with conversational analysis.
This agent-based approach extends the value of VIRA’s Snowflake modernization: trusted data supports both structured reporting and conversational access to business information across multiple workflows.
Outcome
The Q2 engagement delivered the agreed scope on time and on budget. Four reports reached production: Opportunities, Accounts Receivable, Monthly Shipping and Backlog. Self-service reporting reduced reporting cycles from days to minutes.
The operational value extends beyond consolidating data:
- Consistent reporting. Shared definitions reduce conflicting interpretations of business performance.
- Less manual preparation. Automated pipelines and self-service reporting reduce reliance on repeated spreadsheet compilation.
- Connected commercial and operational insight. Sales, finance, shipping and backlog reporting draw on the same governed foundation.
- Conversational access to Opportunities. A Cortex Agent connects natural-language questions to the Opportunities data and its business definitions within Snowflake Intelligence.
Value across the business
The first four production reports address distinct operational needs while sharing the same data foundation. Snowflake Intelligence extends that foundation with a Cortex Agent for natural-language reporting on Opportunities data.
| Function | Status | Before | With the platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales opportunities | Production report | Salesforce information was disconnected from backend operations. | An Opportunities report built on the consolidated reporting foundation. |
| Accounts receivable | Production report | Financial reporting depended on fragmented source data and manual preparation. | An Accounts Receivable report using governed enterprise data. |
| Shipping | Production report | Shipping visibility required data compilation across operational sources. | A Monthly Shipping report available through the production reporting environment. |
| Backlog | Production report | Teams depended on disconnected extracts to assemble a business view. | A Backlog report delivered alongside the other priority business reports. |
| Conversational analytics | Cortex Agent built | No clear route from existing reporting to advanced AI models. | A Cortex Agent in Snowflake Intelligence provides semantic reporting through natural-language queries over Opportunities data. |
The Q3 continuation focuses on expanding the lakehouse foundation, governance, additional Epicor tables, and customer and vendor master data. This builds on the delivered Q2 scope rather than treating modernization as a one-time reporting exercise.
Why NorthBay?
NorthBay brought together data architecture, ingestion, transformation, semantic modeling and reporting delivery to address VIRA’s immediate operational needs and longer-term AI ambitions. The engagement connected multiple enterprise systems, aligned business definitions and delivered four production reports within the agreed schedule and budget.
As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, NorthBay combined cloud engineering with Snowflake delivery expertise to establish a governed platform that VIRA can extend. The result gives teams a more consistent view of the business, natural-language access to Opportunities data, and a foundation for further analytics and AI capabilities.
