Reporting

Solution Description

Creating reporting environments based on Business Intelligence (BI) tools: Microsoft Power BI or Tableau is a step towards modern data management that combines comprehensiveness with flexibility.

The contemporary world presents companies with many challenges, repeatedly and often requiring complex and rapid decisions. Unfortunately, many organisations still struggle with inefficient practices based on manual report generation processes, e.g. MS Excel or flat files, which are fraught with several risks. The use of BI reporting tools makes it possible to build an integrated system that automates the collection, processing and visualisation of data, resulting in higher operational precision. The quintessential and overriding business objective of building reporting environments is to transform data into Information, which allows the above-mentioned precision of business activities to be combined with an effective system for providing information for investment, operational or management purposes.

BI reporting tools allow the centralisation of data with access to key information and support effective collaboration within teams. Their scalability ensures that the solution grows with the needs of the organisation, which is crucial in today’s volatile and fast-paced world. Automating reporting processes frees up time and resources, eliminating the need to generate analyses manually. The Client therefore not only receives a tool for effective data management, but also a competitive advantage through better interpretation and use of the information collected. BI reporting tools stand out as an essential part of a strategic approach to reporting and data analysis, providing the foundation for success in the digital age.

Our experience also allows us to build a sense of trust in the reporting solutions by implementing customised, secure and thoughtful production processes, training end users and supporting the Client with knowledge regarding the relevance and complementarity of the solutions. Our relentless pursuit of perfection allows us to combine the world of modern visualisation based on User Experience methodologies with the optimal technological use of reporting tools.

Case study

Business need

Manual, scattered, time-consuming, incomplete and unscalable – this was the reporting environment we found at one of our Clients from the lease industry. Countless Excel files, flat files hosted on an FTP server, lists hosted on Sharepoint and, finally, several data sources and manual processing.

The dynamic growth of the company and the hundreds of decisions to be made looking ahead to the future on the current architecture was a huge challenge. Rationally, the Client decided to attempt to create a cloud-based Data Warehouse and a fully automated reporting environment. The Client’s awareness and desire to gain an edge in many aspects and areas was awe-inspiring.

Solution

To meet the needs of the Organisation, a Data Warehouse was built in Microsoft Fabric and Power BI cloud tools. We started creating the reporting environment with an in-depth business and technical analysis. It enabled us to achieve a network of business and technical relationships, which at a later stage allowed us to make an optimal reporting solution. Very often in this type of projects we also build a full manufacturing and documentation and training standard. Thanks to this approach and the use of our know-how, the Client receives a fully serviced, automated, described and, with a view to the future, scaled and reusable manufacturing process. As part of the standard, the processes for gathering business requirements and working at the developer/analyst/end-user interface have been structured, in order to dispel, once and for all, doubts about the way and techniques of having discussions and collaborating leading to answering the question: what do we need to achieve our business goal. The next stage is to build and describe the production processes for both the Data Warehouse and report building. This stage is usually crucial, as it allowed the Client to first demonstrate the full magnificence of this type of solution, but also a sense of legitimacy and comfort in using it. In this case, the development of reports in several areas by multiple developers, analysts, architects and business users proceeded in a standardised and auditable manner.

The concept included building centralised semantic models that were used for multiple reports, which in turn were made available to end-users within the Power BI Application allowing a single link to the Reporting Hub. As part of the standardisation, we also focused on taking the visual aspect to a completely different level through the use of UX methodology and tools such as Figma. The reports gained a single functional and visual standard, which we tailored individually to each report. Automation also extended to the documentation and versioning aspect of the reporting environment. This is because the use of Azure Repos and Confluence enabled almost complete automation of the documentation of reports in the business and technical areas, but also, most importantly, the versioning of all necessary report resources. An incredible confidence-building factor was introduced by defining incremental deployment standards for reports in the Power BI Service, thanks to the synchronous operation of the repository, deployment pipelines and implementation culture within service interruptions. Just as with any organisation, we also performed the administration of the environment, which was based on assigning responsible persons within the organisation, building Power BI Service resource monitors, semantic model refresh alerts and report usage metrics. Such an administrative package makes it possible to investigate any undesirable phenomena, but also to answer the question of who is using the reports and to what extent. At the very end, the complete and fully automated environment was presented to the user through presentations and functional and maintenance training.

Benefits

The result of building the reporting environment exceeded the Client’s expectations. Through full creation standardisation, a reduction in the number of reports has been achieved, this has led to less information fragmentation, reusable visual templates for reports have been built, data structures have been optimised, and access times to key information have been optimised and reduced. In addition, a zero-touch platform providing up-to-date and clear data was achieved, a reporting hub was built in the Power BI Service, in which the user gained a navigation panel for the entire reporting environment under a single link, eliminating the time spent ‘wandering’ in intermediate spaces. Through education and experience, the Client gained full confidence in the information presented, technological peace of mind through the standardisation of implementation processes. A workshop with the Client was also an incredible advantage, through which we offered technological innovations to meet current, but also future needs.

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