Power BI Reporting Transformation

SITUATION  ​

Our client, a Fortune 200 technology product and service provider, needed to transition from their legacy on-premises Cognos reporting software to Microsoft’s market-leading cloud-based Power BI and analytics platform. They required assistance in executing an effective and efficient transformation from 1,000+ centrally owned and maintained reports to centrally supported, but business-owned self-service environments. The client needed help developing reports for new requests and providing support, guidance, and best practices to Power BI users from multiple business groups. There was also an opportunity to provide a proactive centralized support and governance strategy to mitigate performance and resource issues. The client was able to confidently turn to Apex Systems for flexible and seamless support in this effort as a Microsoft Partner.  ​

This project demanded multiple solutions. The first was through our true integrated delivery approach: coaching and supporting the implementation of the migration roadmap. Our managers guided PI planning (a quarterly scaled Agile prioritization exercise), creating a strategic roadmap in partnership with the client. Once our data engineers securely transferred data to the cloud from the client’s servers, our strategy and delivery teams designed, developed, tested, and deployed certified datasets and report dashboards. We collaborated closely with the client’s business leaders to ensure the accurate migration of reports for each department across five business domains – Supply Chain, Finance, HR, Sales, and the Analytics Center of Excellence. Apex Managers engaged with the client’s reporting team, addressing challenges in replicating Cognos behavior in Power BI. ​

In addition to delivering Power BI assets, our team proactively identified a governance opportunity, raised the concern, and created and implemented the center of excellence metadata and audit process. This was implemented to give the client control of reporting assets as well as visibility and insights to support a Center of Excellence-maintained Power BI environment supporting multiple business domains via a hub and spoke strategy. Apex continued to work collaboratively with the client’s full-time employees to deliver new reporting guidelines, a tenant management strategy for unused items, a governance and control process to keep a clean and stable environment, Power BI best practices, education, and change management. Apex strategically implemented the changes and assisted the client with monitoring usage to ensure stability. We were there every step of the way to guide users on any day-to-day challenges. Partnering with their support team, we even delivered monthly office hours with our specialists to ensure a smooth transition. ​

RESULT  ​

We started as a part of an integrated team with the client and another vendor. After the first six months, the client decided to move away from the other vendor and work solely with Apex on this effort. Our team was quickly able to adapt to the client’s people, process, and technology architecture. We made changes to create a standard Agile end-to-end BI process, measured by on-time delivery of analytics and BI assets. We proactively recognized a governance problem and created a Center of Excellence solution. Focusing on enablement helped the client build their internal capabilities.​