Delivering a Single Source of Truth for Analytics

Client situation

A global 125-year-old safety certification company, with offices in over 40 countries, identified the need to move toward a more performance-based, data-backed operational model.

The client invested in Power BI Premium and incrementally deployed 60+ Analysis Services Tabular models on premise to support dashboards and reporting across the enterprise. Lacking a centralized architecture vision for these models and a Data Warehouse architecture optimized to support them, the business relationship with IT became strained.

In addition, a more democratized self-service model was required by the business for operational analytics through a consolidated data model. A more consolidated model would relieve the maintenance burden from IT and support a more centralized version of the truth.

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Our approach

Launch leveraged an iterative development approach to assess, design, and implement a scalable and centralized data model, and did the following:

• Provided awareness of the gaps within the existing architecture and architected the foundation for the consolidated model 
• Interviewed business owners to understand the important business processes and gather reporting and measures for delivering the consolidated data model
• Developed a backlog of prioritized user stories which were used throughout the development lifecycle 
• Created a business semantic layer which served as the foundation of the new consolidated model that helped drive greater user adoption
• Developed, tested, and deployed a consolidated tabular model along with the proper security protocols to support business needs

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Results

Launch successfully partnered with client stakeholders to improve the business and data architecture and drive the implementation of a consolidated data model, thus creating a single source of truth for analytics

The client:

• Gained insight into how each business area interacts and leverages the analytics platform
• Improved access to data that was originally spread across 26 sources and was now in a centralized location 
• Decommissioned several redundant dashboards by implementing row level security and trained developers in best practices 
• Rolled out a new intake process for gathering analytics requirements which focused on actionable insights along with iterative design
• Updated platform architecture to increase storage efficiency and enhance user experience

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