Cemex connects 1,800+ global facilities in real-time

Company size
2000+
Region
North America
Industry
Manufacturing
Key results
  • Rapidly integrated over 4,000 tables in SAP for data streaming, processing and alerting
  • Reduced data processing time from weeks to near real-time
  • 90% reduction in manual data ingestion setup and maintenance work
  • 25% of its global workforce (10,000+ users) now using data to drive daily decisions
  • Built a CO2 data model that calculates and monitors emissions across all facilities
“Fivetran has revolutionized our global SAP data delivery, reducing time to insights from days to minutes. We can react swiftly to market changes and track our sustainability efforts at any moment.”
— Gerardo S. Reyna Caamaño, Global Data Architecture Manager at Cemex

Cemex is an industry-leading global construction materials and solutions company that is on a mission to drive a more sustainable future. They provide cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregate materials and urbanization solutions to growing markets around the world. Since being founded in Mexico in 1906, they’ve grown to employ 46,000 people worldwide, achieving more than $17 billion in revenue in 2023. With more than 1,800 plant facilities across multiple continents, they generate data around the clock.

Gerardo S. Reyna Caamaño, Global Data Architecture Manager at Cemex, is responsible for providing data for all analytics, data science and business needs at every division of the enterprise. Cemex’s data architecture approach was SAP-centric until 2017, when the business shifted toward the need for near real-time insights into its global sales and commercial operations. 

Cemex needed a solution that could:

  • Offer the scalability and flexibility of cloud-based architectures to support a modular, best-of-breed data lake
  • Improve data delivery from its SAP systems and other data sources from days and weeks to near real-time
  • Support a diverse set of data, ranging from IoT sensors to supply chain data to forward-thinking AI/ML models

Global commercial data in minutes: The power of unlocking SAP 

Using the previous technology, ingesting Cemex’s sales and commercial data required a team of approximately 10 data consultants to monitor and maintain. Additionally, with batch-based replication, it could only sync SAP data once per day. 

Reyna brought on Fivetran to quickly move that data into Snowflake, giving the business analysts near real-time visibility for more than 4,000 tables.

Fast access to global SAP data in Snowflake quickly provides actionable insights for Cemex’s international business. It used to take days or weeks to process market data and understand economic conditions and supply chain issues. With Fivetran and Snowflake, leaders across the company can see exactly what is going on with a live dashboard representing every market.

All of this was accomplished in a short proof of concept (POC), where Fivetran provided dedicated customer support to Reyna’s Mexico-based team. By the end of the POC, Reyna no longer required a team of 10 or more people to maintain. 

“With Fivetran, we are getting data out of our seven global SAP ECC and HANA instances. In two minutes or less, we can gather raw data that allows the business to quickly and easily analyze any territory.”
– Gerardo S. Reyna Caamaño, Global Data Architecture Manager at Cemex

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Customer 360 provides a personalized experience 

The new data architecture powered by Fivetran enabled a comprehensive overview of customer interactions, order history and delivery data across multiple touchpoints. When a customer calls with a question, Cemex staff can use purchase and interaction history to offer a more personalized experience.

Its ability to centralize data from various systems enabled the team to build an application called Customer Visibility, which provides a fully automated customer experience with near real-time supply chain and order visibility. 

“We collect and analyze commercial data improving customer experience using Fivetran, Snowflake and Power BI.”
– Gerardo S. Reyna Caamaño, Global Data Architecture Manager at Cemex

Driving sustainability with improved data management

Recent years have brought increased regulation and oversight in the use of natural resources, particularly in Europe. Cemex now closely tracks carbon emissions, water usage and other sustainability KPIs across its global facilities. Before Fivetran, this work required reconciling many inconsistent data sources and data sets.

Fivetran’s data movement platform allows Cemex to easily track what resources are being consumed, produced, received or delivered anywhere in the world. 

Cemex has built a new CO2 data model to track emissions across all its facilities. Its data team has received recognition from Snowflake in the "Data for Good" category, highlighting the project's social impact and reduction in Cemex’s environmental footprint.

Cemex’s new data architecture is also powering forward-looking AI/ML use cases. Cemex is currently running more than 10 different pilot projects in several business areas.

“With Fivetran, we now have more than 45 business units using this new data ecosystem with more than 10,000 end users in Power BI doing analysis every day. This was impossible for us on our previous tech stack.”
– Gerardo S. Reyna Caamaño, Global Data Architecture Manager at Cemex

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Why they chose Fivetran

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