CHALLENGE & BRIEF
A leading primary industry client in New Zealand embarked on an ambitious IT change program to transform their data infrastructure and business processes.
They faced the following operational challenges:
- Budget Management: Financial strain and conflicts due to poor budget management within contract systems.
- Milestone Management: Struggles with monitoring contract deliverables, including both financial and non-financial milestones.
- Manual Processes: Resource-intensive processes, especially around contract variations and renewals.
To address these challenges, the client engaged Walkerscott as their BI partner to drive data-driven change across the organisation. The goal was to deliver impactful solutions while minimising time and cost to market through an agile project engagement model.
SOLUTION
Enterprise Data Warehouse
An enterprise data warehouse was implemented using the on-premises Microsoft BI stack, including SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS. This solution leveraged the client’s existing on-premises investments, aligning with their preference to avoid cloud solutions.
Financial Reporting
A financial reporting solution was developed to analyse and report on forecasts and budgets using MS Dynamics Great Plains. This included:
- Cost-Center Reporting: Set up on Power BI, empowering the finance team to build their own reports using a specifically created data model.
- Training & Governance: Provided training to the finance team and assisted the IT team in setting up governance processes and environments.
Sales and Production Reporting
Walkerscott connected to the databases underlying the client’s proprietary on-premises applications to assist various teams:
- Renewable Product Sales Team: Delivered sales reporting capabilities.
- Operations Planning Team: Enabled sophisticated production reporting, including harvest tonnage by source versus planned production and crew workday productivity analysis.
Ongoing Projects
Walkerscott is currently enabling domestic and export renewable product delivery planning and customer allocation, as well as product defectivity reporting.
System Review
Walkerscott conducted a review of the client’s internally built business system to:
- Provide an objective assessment of application design and architecture.
- Evaluate business processes within the Operations and Logistics division.
- Recommend potential service models for ongoing development and support, or introduction of commercial products.
RESULTS
Better data management, enhanced financial reporting, empowered teams, and strategic insights.
- Improved Financial Oversight: The financial reporting solution enabled better analysis and reporting, leading to more accurate forecasts and budgets.
- Empowered Teams: Training and empowering the finance team to build their own reports resulted in increased efficiency and autonomy.
- Enhanced Decision-Making: Sophisticated production reporting for the operations planning team improved operational efficiency and productivity.
- Objective System Assessment: The review of the internal business system provided valuable insights and recommendations for future improvements.
CONCLUSION
Successful data-driven change
The partnership between the primary industry client and Walkerscott has been instrumental in driving data-driven change across the organisation. By adopting an agile approach and leveraging Microsoft’s BI stack, the client has seen significant improvements in their financial reporting, sales, and production reporting capabilities. This case study exemplifies the successful collaboration and the tangible benefits of a well-executed IT change program.
While the on-premises Microsoft BI stack, including SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS, provided a robust foundation for our client’s enterprise data warehouse, the landscape of data solutions has evolved significantly. Today, Microsoft Fabric offers a comprehensive, cloud-based data platform that brings together data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, and business intelligence in a unified environment.
