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About

Linfox Armaguard Group is a leader in secure currency supply chain and technology solutions across Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Since 1938 Armaguard has been synonymous with the Cash in Transit industry and today is a globally recognised for its secure transport and protection of cash and precious cargo.

Challenge

Armaguard required an expert data modeler and Power BI specialist to work alongside the Data and Analytics (D&A) team to develop an Enterprise Data Model (EDM. Data from multiple sources systems and spreadsheets needed to be loaded into a central cloud-based landing area to store a copy of raw data, ready to be transformed and modelled into a star schema format. The business intelligence tools of choice by Armaguard for this project were Snowflake (database) and Talend (ETL tool). Armaguard also required Power BI (analytics and visualisation) semantic models and reports to be developed for Human Resources, Fleet Management, System Health Indicators and Customer Dashboards.

Key areas of focus:

  • Design the EDM using SQL Database Modeler (SQL DBM)

  • Create a central cloud-based EDM using Snowflake to store a copy of raw data from multiple sources in a landing area

  • Develop Talend jobs to extract, load and transform (ELT) data from the landing area into the EDM area

  • Build Power BI semantic models and reports for Human Resources, Fleet Management, System Health Indicators and Customer Dashboards

  • Assist the D&A team with Power BI advice, development and maintenance

Solution

Fujitsu Data & AI hired AGER BI as the preferred expert data modeler and Power BI specialist to assist Armaguard with the development and implementation of the end-to-end solution.

To begin the project, AGER BI focussed on designing the EDM using SQL DBM, a data modelling tool that stores the SQL code to create all tables within a database. The D&A team focussed on building the Talend jobs to populate the landing tables, ready for AGER BI to ELT the data in the landing area into the modelled tables.

Once the SQL tables were designed and the landing data tables were populated, AGER BI designed and implemented the Talend jobs that would ELT the data into the relevant dimension (utilising type 2 slowly changing dimensions) and fact tables (using UPSERT to speed up data refreshes). The Talend jobs were then set to run at scheduled intervals depending on when the business area needed fresh data.

Power BI semantic models and reports were developed Human Resources, Fleet Management, System Health Indicators and Customer Dashboard. AGER BI continues to support the D&A team with Power BI advice, development and maintenance.

Benefits

Following the successful design, development and implementation of the Snowflake EDM, Talend and Power BI solution, Armaguard now benefits from the following accurate and timely data, and world-class Power BI reports for the following:

  • Human Resources (Headcount, Turnover, Retention, Rolling Turnover, Separations, Annual Leave, Absenteeism and Diversity)
  • Fleet Dashboard (Costs, Vehicle Details, Repairs & Maintenance and Vehicle Faults)
  • System Health Indicator (Landing vs EDM tables count, Slowly Changing Dimension Indicators, FACT table count, Dimension table counts)
  • Customer Dashboard (Services, Cash Collected, Cash Supplied, Customer Service Contacts, Service Locations, Missed Services, Weekly Spend and Monthly Spend)

The above reports enable Armaguard to manage and monitor key performance indicators for critical business areas through accurate and up-to-date data, whilst also maintaining high data quality standards and governance. This project has resulted in a significant increase in productivity, helped identify data quality errors and provided a refresh of data at critical intervals for the business to successfully manage operations.