CASE STUDY | Return-it
Return-It
AWS Data Migration for BI Modernization
INDUSTRY
Recycling & Environmental Stewardship
Data Migration BI Modernization
SOLUTION AREA
Amazon Redshift Serverless
Power BI
AWS Glue
ML & GenAI Readiness
TECHNOLOGY
The Challenge
Return-It (Encorp Pacific) is a federally incorporated, not-for-profit product stewardship corporation. Beverage container management is their core business, and they also provide recycling services for appliances and electronics across British Columbia.
Return-It relied on direct Power BI connections to MongoDB, with MSSQL used as an intermediary for transformations. Reports were slow, calculations lived in Power BI, and the architecture wasn’t scalable for future analytics or ML. With limited internal cloud resources and a tight 1–2-month timeline, they needed a modern AWS data foundation and validation of Amazon Redshift as an analytics layer. Return-It was seeking a local, skilled partner to specifically test and prove Amazon Redshift as an intermediary layer for their existing Power BI reports to improve performance, scalability, and maintainability.
The Data Elephant Difference
Partnering with consulting firm was new to Return-It - they turned to their AWS Account Team for recommendations on partners that are local, flexible, and can drive true value while training and enabling their internal team. Data Elephant brought a lean delivery team, deep expertise in AWS technologies, data migrations, and PowerBI, and provided an outcome-focused delivery model - tailored for smaller technical teams.
We modernized Return-It’s analytics platform by implementing Amazon Redshift Services, AWS Glue and by creating flagship reports, and designing an architecture designed for future BI expansion and ML use cases.
Deep AWS experience delivered Redshift, Glue, and BI modernization end-to-end
Leveraged a true “co-creation” model to work side-by-side with Return-It’s technical team for skills transfer
Prioritized performance, resilience, and future-ready architecture
Built repeatable pipelines from MongoDB + MSSQL into Redshift and shifted business logic from Power BI into Redshift for performance
Established clear recovery workflows aligned with RTO/RPO expectations
The Outcome
Return-It achieved significantly faster and more reliable reporting, with query times reduced by up to 90% after shifting logic and data processing into Amazon Redshift. Power BI performance improved dramatically, supported by a scalable, cloud-native architecture built on AWS Glue and Redshift Serverless. The standardized ETL and recovery workflows strengthened data quality, consistency, and resilience, while the successful rebuild of the Customer View report validated Redshift as the long-term analytics foundation. The project delivered a modern platform that supports today’s BI needs and positions Return-It for future machine learning and advanced analytics initiatives.
Results at a Glance
FASTER REPORTING
Reducing query time by 90%
VISIBILITY & TRUST
End-to-end data lineage through Unity Catalog and Collibra
IMPROVED BI PERFORMANCE
Through pushdown of calculations into Redshift
SCALABLE PLATFORM
Cloud-native, cost-effective and ready for ML and Innovation
RELIABLE RECOVERY
With standardized Glue patterns
