Case Study.

Advised on data strategy, defined the Data Architecture, built the Azure Infrastructure, Data Integration (ETL), Data Warehouse & developed the Power BI Data Model.

Age UK

Client
Age UK
Company

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Industry
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About Age Uk

Age UK provide services and support at a national and local level to inspire, enable and support older people. We stand up and speak for all those who have reached later life, and protect the long-term interests of future generations.

1.

The Challenge

Age UK were using outdated business intelligence methods. Their analytics and intelligence capabilities revolved around custom build excel dashboards. It was a heavily manual process, requiring manual extraction of data, from there it had to be prepared and cleaned manually to be ready for reporting.

This was very time-consuming process, sometimes taking entire days to get the data ready, and resulted in human error and often conflicting sources of truth.

A second issue was many within Age UK were not confident with technology. Their process relied upon one or two experienced members of staff. This was problematic as Age UK relied heavily on a few and this caused problems in terms.

A third challenge was due to the lack of confidence with technology, and the need to improve, there was a lack of buy in at possibly changing from

2.

What we did

We recommend that they work closely with the Microsoft Business Intelligence software solutions. As their current services used Microsoft Office 365 and it would allow a seamless integration.

The first step was to automate their data extraction daily. This meant they had all the up-to-date data at their fingertips each day. We did this through Microsoft Azure using timer functions and storing the data in blob storage.

From there we brought the data into PowerBI, cleaned, and transformed their data into a ready-made model for report building. Working closely with reporting managers we went through their current reports and built them in Power BI.

This meant they now had ready built reports, which automatically refreshed each day. All they needed to do was select their chose dates and export the report visuals.

Finally, we upskilled and trained staff on navigating and using Power BI reports so they could be confident and have the autonomy to get their up-to-date data and visuals they needed to write their reports, rather than rely on others to do it for them.

3.

Result

Age UK now have the confidence to take reporting into their own hands. Tasks that previously took hours or days are now completed within minutes. The entire leadership team can confidently get the data they need when they need it.

It has improved data quality in their reports and not only saved huge chunks of time but given each reporting manager the autonomy and confidence to take control over their data and reporting.