Sigma Computing Helps Digital Manufacturing Trailblazer Shatter Data Literacy Barriers, Lower Costs, and Increase Customer Satisfaction

SAN FRANCISCO - August 27, 2020 - Sigma Computing, an innovator in cloud analytics and business intelligence (A&BI) for enterprise teams, is helping Fictiv disrupt the manufacturing industry and better serve its customers, like quip and Gecko Robotics. Fictiv’s mission is to help designers and developers create hardware at the same speed as software. The company’s cloud-first strategy led Fictiv to funnel data from its CRM, ERP, and proprietary applications into Snowflake and deploy Sigma to provide all employees with direct, governed access to the data. Fictiv’s data and BI teams are now able to focus on higher priorities, like system integration, increasing efficiencies, and improving the Fictiv platform. “Sigma has ultimately helped us achieve a number of key business outcomes, including the ability to lower manufacturing costs for customers and more effectively prioritize product features based on demand,” said Fictiv Chief Architect Jim Ruga. “Actionable insights like these make a big difference in customer satisfaction and Fictiv’s overall success.”

Fictiv’s previous A&BI tool required deep technical skills to find answers to common business questions, as well as extensive resources to maintain its infrastructure and underlying data models. As a result, the data and BI teams struggled to keep up with the business teams’ requests for information. Tired of waiting for answers, 90 percent of business users exported data from the warehouse to spreadsheets for analysis, opening Fictiv to a range of governance, accuracy, and security issues. Fictiv needed to reduce the time spent on maintenance and simplify analytics workflows while simultaneously enabling business users to find the answers they need to make data-driven decisions. Ruga found the solution in Sigma. “Sigma’ spreadsheet interface provides business users with an analytics environment they are already comfortable with using. Everyone knows how to use a spreadsheet, so it was natural for them. And because it's backed by the power of the cloud and automatically generates SQL under the hood, Sigma delivers rapid insights into the common questions business teams ask,” added Ruga.

Read the complete Fictiv case study or watch Sigma’s “Data Teams: Here’s How to Escape Report Factory Hell” webinar to learn how Fictiv Business Analyst Franklin Pfaller reclaimed 50 percent of his time, enabling him to focus on more meaningful data initiatives. “It is Sigma’s mission to enable anyone to become the most powerful analyst of their data,” said Sigma Computing CEO Mike Palmer. “It is deeply gratifying to see that mission fulfilled with customers, like Fictiv, where every employee, from the SQL experts to BI analysts and product managers, is able to use the same tool to explore and analyze data. The real-time insights only Sigma can provide empower everyone to make the fast, informed decisions that are necessary in today’s rapidly changing world.” The Fictiv digital manufacturing ecosystem has upended an industry that has long been stuck using outdated, time-consuming, and cost-intensive processes. The company’s use of modern cloud technologies combined with its data-driven strategy has introduced agility into the design-to-production process, expediting it while simultaneously reducing costs. Fictiv leverages data to determine vendor performance, costing models, and the impact new features may have before they are rolled out, as well as to track new feature adoption, new business mapping, and product feature development. Innovative startups, household brands, and every company in between depend on Fictiv to bring new products to market at unprecedented speeds.

‍ABOUT SIGMA

‍Sigma is the first true self-service analytics and business intelligence (A&BI) platform enabling anyone to explore data and make real-time, data-driven decisions. The cloud-native platform provides direct, live access to cloud data warehouses through an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface, improving performance, security, or modern data governance. The Sigma Spreadsheet empowers anyone to explore and analyze data, turning data exploration into the iterative process it was always meant to be and delivering insights in seconds - no manual coding required. Sigma brings data teams, analysts, and business users together in a single platform to power a community-driven approach to A&BI.