Sunbelt Rentals skaliert Finanz-transformation mit Alteryx One

Sunbelt Rentals knows how to grow. Through decades of acquisitions and expansion, the company built one of North America’s most extensive equipment rental operations, across the US, UK, and beyond. With that scale comes inherited complexity: disconnected systems, entrenched manual workflows, and institutional processes were effective enough to keep pace — but not built for the speed a modern enterprise demands.

Sunbelt’s leadership recognized the need to build an automated analytics layer, one that could connect siloed systems, automate repetitive work, put data in the hands of every business user, and keep pace with transformation already underway across its technology stack.

From legacy processes to modern, scalable workflows

Sunbelt had the foundation of a great data organization with deep operational expertise and long-tenured teams. While institutional knowledge was a strength, it also meant many processes had been running the same way for 20 years — often manually, in Excel, and dependent on legacy knowledge.

Across finance, accounting, tax, operations, and fleet, teams were pulling data from disparate SQL sources and manually assembling reports in Excel. The time-consuming processes were also creating risk in finance where SOX compliance is non-negotiable. Without governed workflows, auditability was inconsistent, data lineage was unclear, and scale was impossible.

LaShell Estes, Director of Finance Technology and Transformation, had experience building a data and automation culture from the ground up at a prior company. She was brought on to Sunbelt with a goal to empower business users to use technology in their everyday processes to drive business efficiency.

Her foundational tool of choice was Alteryx. “Alteryx is going to take those manual processes that you’re doing in Excel that are repeatable and really put in synergy, documentation, efficiency, and speed,” said Estes.

Building a governed automation model with Alteryx One

Sunbelt’s transformation strategy centered on enablement, governance, and cross-functional partnership. Estes describes Alteryx as the “core” of a hybrid solution that brings together Power Automate, Power BI, Power Apps, Databricks, and other systems — helping teams bring data in, prepare it, analyze it, and deliver outputs where the business needs them.

Estes also knew that widespread transformation and automation at scale required a deliberate strategy. She anchored the approach in four pillars:

1. Alignment

The first priority was executive and IT alignment. Sunbelt had strong sponsorship from the CFO, but Estes knew transformation would only scale if finance, IT, and the business were moving in the same direction. That meant positioning Alteryx as a way to help the business help itself, while keeping IT focused on enterprise priorities, security, and governance.

2. Enablement

Sunbelt also invested heavily in training and certification. When Estes started, Sunbelt had 27 Alteryx licenses. Within five months, the company had grown to 325 enabled users and around 80 certifications.

Sunbelt supports enablement through training, office hours, and partnerships that help shape training modules and accelerate adoption. “You can’t just give people a tool and hope they use it,” Estes said. “You have to teach them how to use it by giving them the training to build the skill sets.”

3. Automation development

With users trained and opportunities identified, Sunbelt began running eight- to 12-week automation sprints to help teams turn repeatable, manual processes into automated workflows that deliver value quickly. Some automations are simple. Others are more complex. Together, they help create what Estes calls an “automation mindset.”

Estes says she views every workflow as a reusable asset. “The goal is to leverage what people are already doing,” Estes said. “By documenting and sharing automations, we can help teams build from workflows that already exist.”

4. SOX compliance

Because many early use cases supported finance and accounting, SOX compliance had to be built in from the start. Sunbelt established a dedicated Alteryx Server for SOX workflows and created a supporting ServiceNow process to help manage controls, documentation, and governance.

The governance infrastructure built around that server — controlling access, documenting workflows, and tracking data lineage through Alteryx telemetry — became the backbone of everything that followed.

Faster answers and measurable results

The results came quickly, and they came from places that mattered most to the business.

In tax and accounting, automations tied directly to the close calendar slashed time spent on recurring calculations, journal entry preparation, and data assembly. A reporting process that previously took six days was reduced to six seconds. The team has documented more than $2 million in analytics value driven through Alteryx — a figure that continues to grow as new departments onboard.

In operations, the fleet team used to pull data and compile reports once a month. With Alteryx automating that workflow, they now run it weekly. “If we have an asset that’s down, instead of waiting 30 days to notify our vendors that we need it fixed, we can now do that notification every week,” Estes noted. Faster repair cycles mean higher asset availability and directly recoverable revenue.

The shift in team confidence has been just as notable as the numbers. “Teams are now spending their time on what they want, not the mundane things just to do the job,” said Estes. “People have confidence in what their work is, what their work product is, and the value that they’re delivering.”

Scaling Alteryx One, Databricks, and AI-driven workflows

Sunbelt’s next chapter is focused on scale. As the company continues its Databricks journey, Estes sees Alteryx One playing a key role in connecting cloud data, AI, and governed analytics in one platform.

That vision includes leveraging live query with Databricks, expanding use of Auto Insights, and exploring machine learning, app functionality, and AI tools. For Estes, Alteryx One offers the flexibility to bring cloud data into business processes more seamlessly while improving governance over how teams use data.

One early AI opportunity is in use tax. Sunbelt has already automated part of the use tax calculation process in Alteryx, pulling invoice details through an API. The next step is using Alteryx AI tools to read PDFs, determine whether use tax was paid, extract the relevant amount, and eliminate the need for someone to manually review thousands of invoices each week.

Sunbelt is also continuing to build its internal automation community. Estes’ advice is simple: create your village, train your users, govern early, and build for future scale. Automation can’t be forced. But once teams experience the value, momentum builds.