Creating data-driven decisions by connecting Power BI to existing data

Our client, a leading Alberta-based paper producer, approached Convverge with an interesting set of requirements. The team’s maintenance work orders were being stored within a proprietary software package that had limited reporting capabilities. Maintenance information was difficult to analyze and present, thereby providing little value for management reports and weekly maintenance meetings. Managers felt that they didn’t have a clear and accurate view of what maintenance tasks were outstanding, what were complete, and what items may not have been addressed at all. Was integrating with Power BI the solution?

The Challenge

Our challenge was to create a modern reporting solution that was dynamic, up to date, easy to consume, and available across desktop and mobile devices. Further, with our client’s corporate headquarters located well outside of a major urban center, our client needed to find the expertise of the right partner who was also willing to meet them on their site.

The Solution

We visited our client at their work site and met with them to understand the specific report metrics and KPIs that were useful to drive their decision-making processes. Next, we gained an understanding of how to interact with the source data, where it was stored, how it was collected and what transformations were required. Then selecting Power BI as our data visualization tool of choice, we created the necessary queries to extract, load, transform and report on the data. Lastly, we created a series of dashboards and interactive reports that delivered the solution that met their business requirements.

The Outcome

A dynamic set of dashboards built on Power BI were delivered to our client. This solution has allowed the management and maintenance teams to easily view and understand work order and maintenance information. By leveraging Power BI and connecting to the proprietary source data, Convverge was able to create a meaningful channel to display and interact with the data that was already there. This has enabled faster decision making with less manual labour required to produce the legacy Excel-based reports. Our client is now doing more with much less!