Client project
Industry: Construction & Contracting
Rescuing a Contractor ERP Database from Month-End Collapse
- SQL Server
- Always On
- Query Store
- Automated restore testing
Delivery duration: Defined after discovery; no verified delivery record published.
Overview
A contracting company whose ERP became unusable in the last week of every month.
The Challenge
Cost reports that run in seconds during the year take twenty minutes at month-end, when every site engineer submits at once. The database has grown for six years with no index review, statistics are stale, and the nightly backup has never been restored to check that it works.
The Solution
We captured the actual slow queries from Query Store rather than guessing, then indexed and rewrote only what the evidence named. We rebuilt the maintenance plan as a scheduled job that updates statistics and verifies every backup by restoring it to a scratch instance, and added a readable secondary so month-end reporting stopped competing with data entry.
How we verify success
Before implementation, we agree on a baseline and acceptance criteria. Performance, security checks, recovery tests, and operational handover are documented against that baseline. No improvement figure is claimed here without a verified measurement.