Client success stories

Bay Building Group engaged AGER BI to undertake a detailed review of its existing data management and reporting environment and define a future-state business intelligence strategy capable of supporting evolving operational and executive reporting requirements.

The engagement included eight workshops with business and technical subject matter experts, a detailed assessment of BBG’s source systems, databases and reporting platforms, identification of architecture and reporting risks, and development of a future-state Microsoft data platform architecture.

AGER BI delivered a comprehensive data management and business intelligence strategy centred on Microsoft Azure, SQL Server, SSIS and Power BI. The strategy gave BBG a structured pathway for separating transactional and reporting workloads, improving data integration, centralising business logic and progressing towards a more scalable, governed reporting environment.

Bay Building Group provides building repair and restoration services across metropolitan and regional Australia, with operations spanning building services, restoration services, and commercial and specialty services.

As BBG’s technology and reporting requirements expanded, the organisation was operating across multiple data sources and reporting platforms. These included BBG Connect for operational and claims data, Timberline for financial information, 8×8 for telephony data, Advanced Excel dashboards, Board reporting and Microsoft Power BI.

BBG was also preparing to transition its core operational platform from BBG Connect to Crunchworks. This created an additional requirement to maintain consolidated reporting across both systems during the transition.

Bay Building Group’s Chief Technology Officer directly engaged AGER BI to assess the environment, identify current risks and limitations, define future reporting requirements and establish a practical enterprise data management and business intelligence strategy.

BBG’s reporting environment had developed across multiple systems and technologies, creating increasing complexity as reporting requirements expanded.

Reporting workloads were querying databases primarily designed to support transactional applications. Advanced Excel dashboards involved manual processing and refreshes, separate spreadsheet variants were being maintained for different states, and reporting business rules had accumulated across layers of report and database code.

BBG’s technical team identified the management and reuse of business rules as a particularly important issue. Significant reporting logic had been developed over time for Scorecard and other BI reporting, but much of that knowledge was embedded within code and difficult to extract and reuse.

BBG was also preparing to migrate from BBG Connect to Crunchworks, requiring an architecture capable of maintaining reporting while both systems operated during the transition.

Key requirements included:

AGER BI conducted a structured discovery, assessment and architecture engagement involving BBG’s business and technical stakeholders.

Eight workshops were held across operational reporting, Power BI, BBG Connect, Timberline and finance, Crunchworks, BBG’s existing reporting databases and 8×8 telephony data. These sessions documented the existing architecture, reporting processes, data refresh requirements, business rules, technical risks and future-state requirements.

AGER BI then developed a detailed data management plan and business intelligence strategy, covering recommended technologies, future-state solution architecture and the design principles required for BBG to implement a fully operational enterprise BI environment.

Following review by BBG’s technical team, AGER BI incorporated further feedback and delivered an updated strategy including a revised visual representation of the proposed architecture.

Key deliverables included:

AGER BI began by documenting how data moved through BBG’s operational and reporting environment.

BBG Connect provided operational claims and job information, Timberline supported financial processes, and 8×8 provided telephony information. Reporting was distributed across Advanced Excel dashboards, Board and Microsoft Power BI.

The review identified that reporting queries were being executed against the BBGConnectCore transactional database. Because this database also supported operational processing, BBG was concerned about the potential impact of extracting reporting data from production systems.

The assessment also identified manual spreadsheet processes, reporting logic distributed across different applications, incomplete data-model documentation and opportunities to improve the integration of operational, financial and telephony information.

This discovery process gave BBG a documented view of its current state and established the technical foundation for the recommended future architecture.

AGER BI designed a target architecture focused on separating operational transaction processing from analytical reporting.

The proposed architecture built on BBG’s existing Microsoft Azure and SQL Server investment while introducing dedicated environments for production reporting, development and testing.

Separate OLTP and OLAP SQL Server environments were designed for transactional and reporting workloads, with dedicated reporting databases planned for BBG Connect, Crunchworks, Timberline and 8×8.

The architecture also provided distinct development and testing environments so changes could be developed and validated outside production.

This approach was designed to reduce the interaction between analytical workloads and production transactional databases while providing BBG with a more structured, maintainable foundation for future enterprise reporting.

AGER BI recommended SQL Server Integration Services as the primary ETL technology for moving data from source systems into dedicated reporting databases.

The integration strategy addressed operational information from BBG Connect and Crunchworks, financial information from Timberline and historical telephony information from 8×8.

During the transition from BBG Connect to Crunchworks, management reporting needed to accommodate data from both platforms. The proposed architecture provided a pathway for consolidating this information within the reporting environment while BBG transitioned between core operational systems.

AGER BI also recommended centralising reporting business rules within SQL views rather than maintaining multiple versions of calculations across individual reports.

Business rules were to be documented, formally reviewed and signed off, providing BBG with clearer ownership and version control of KPI definitions. This recommendation directly addressed an issue highlighted by BBG’s technical team, where substantial reporting knowledge had become embedded within layers of existing code and was difficult to reuse.

Microsoft Power BI was defined as BBG’s strategic reporting platform.

The future state was designed to progressively move reporting away from manually refreshed Excel dashboards and fragmented reporting processes towards centrally managed Power BI reports and datasets.

Power BI row-level security was incorporated into the strategy so a common report could potentially support users across different states while controlling the information each user was authorised to view.

AGER BI also recommended automated data refreshes through SSIS and Power BI Service, centralised data models, documented relationships and more consistent governance of business rules.

Together, these recommendations established a framework for BBG to develop a more governed reporting environment with clearer data ownership, consistent KPI logic and improved maintainability.

The engagement gave Bay Building Group a documented and technically defined pathway for modernising its data management and business intelligence environment.

Key outcomes included:

The work was positively received by BBG’s technical team, which recognised the engagement as an opportunity to step back from day-to-day delivery, document the wider data landscape and plan the organisation’s future data strategy. The resulting strategy was considered a valuable reference for BBG’s current environment and provided practical recommendations for future planning.

Bay Building Group required more than the development of individual reports. The organisation needed an independent assessment of its broader data estate, a clear understanding of existing architecture risks and a practical strategy capable of supporting a major operational-system transition.

AGER BI combined stakeholder engagement, enterprise data architecture, Microsoft SQL Server expertise and Power BI capability to assess the environment from source systems through to management and executive reporting. The engagement brought BBG’s technical and business specialists together to document the current state, challenge existing practices and establish a shared view of the future architecture.

Rather than proposing unnecessary wholesale replacement of BBG’s technology investment, AGER BI designed a pragmatic strategy around the Microsoft infrastructure already in place. The result was a clear future-state architecture and roadmap supporting improved data integration, governed business logic, production workload separation and scalable Power BI reporting.