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How Coastal Cut Manual Business Process by 98% with Snowflake Cortex and Governed Data

Coastal built a Workforce Intelligence Solution on Snowflake Cortex, Snowflake CoWork, and Salesforce Data 360, replacing manual resource coordination with governed, conversational AI embedded in Slack, cutting per-request effort by 98% and saving delivery leads more than 270 hours a year.

 

Challenge

Coastal is a consultancy. Our people are the product. Getting the right expertise to the right engagement at the right time — that's how we deliver. As we grew past 1,700 customers, the questions our delivery leaders needed to answer every day — Who's available? Who has this certification? Do they have relevant expertise? — lived across multiple systems.

The judgment behind staffing decisions was sound. Coastal’s delivery leaders knew our team members, knew the clients, and had built real institutional knowledge over the years But the manual processes weren’t keeping pace with growth. Challenges included:

  • Scattered Context: Skills, certifications, opportunity sales data, and availability lived across separate tools, leaving no single place to answer 'who has this skill, and when are they free’?
  • Manual Compilation: Delivery leads spent real time each week pulling reports, cross-checking Slack, and updating spreadsheets just to answer basic capacity questions.
  • Lagging Insights: Assembled data reflected where things stood yesterday, not where they stood today.
  • Coordination Friction: Availability checks required broad outreach and manual follow-ups, slowing decisions in a business where timing shapes client outcomes.

Rather than keep managing the friction, we decided to fix the foundation, unify the data and put intelligence directly into the tools our teams already use every day.

Solution

We didn't need another dashboard. We needed a way to ask a plain-English question and get a reliable answer without leaving Slack. We designed and deployed the Workforce Intelligence Solution — a conversational AI layer powered by Snowflake Cortex Analyst, Snowflake CoWork (formerly Snowflake Intelligence) and connected to Salesforce Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud), embedded directly in Slack.

  • Live Data Connectivity: A zero-copy data share between Data 360, Snowflake, ERP, and HR systems keeps staffing decisions grounded in live pipeline and availability data.
  • Semantic Alignment: A governed semantic model maps natural-language questions to real staffing logic, bench status, utilization, and skill matching, so the AI interprets how we think about resourcing.
  • Conversational Access: Cortex Analyst, embedded in Slack, gives teams across sales, delivery, and operations instant, contextual answers to plain-English questions without dashboards or handoffs.
  • Verified Governance: A curated response framework ensures every answer reflects validated staffing logic and delivery standards, surfacing trade-offs and flagging where human judgment is needed.

The result is a shared intelligence layer that replaces static reports and manual coordination with trusted answers inside daily workflows.

Clouds & Products

  • Snowflake
  • Data 360
  • Slack
  • Snowflake Cortex Analyst

Results

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The difference showed up fast. What used to be a weekly cycle of assembling information became something our teams could do in the moment, on a call, in a planning session, between meetings.

  • Accelerated Resource Decisions: Effort per request dropped 98%, giving delivery leads back more than 270 hours annually.
  • Earlier Sales Confidence: Staffing intelligence now reaches GTM teams during active sales conversations, so sales teams can validate capacity during a live call instead of telling prospects 'let me check and get back to you’.
  • Compressed Deal Cycles: Reduced handoffs between sales and delivery have shortened the path from late-stage negotiation to a signed contract.
  • Stronger Delivery Precision: Real-time skill matching ensures the right expertise is assigned on day one, reducing rework and protecting project momentum for clients.
  • Proactive Workforce Planning: Live pipeline data linked to current utilization gives leadership 24/7 visibility into hiring and development needs weeks before gaps surface.

The problem we solved isn't unique to Coastal. If your organization runs on expertise — if the quality of what you deliver depends on matching the right people to the right work — the same architecture applies far beyond resourcing: sales ops, customer success planning, capacity forecasting.

The fix isn't more dashboards. It's a governed data foundation, a semantic model that reflects how your business actually thinks, and conversational AI embedded where your teams already are.