Client success stories

A national building services organisation 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 the organisation’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 provided a structured pathway for separating transactional and reporting workloads, improving data integration, centralising business logic and progressing towards a more scalable, governed reporting environment.

The organisation provides building repair and restoration services across metropolitan and regional Australia, with operations spanning building services, restoration services, and commercial and specialty services.

As its technology and reporting requirements expanded, the organisation was operating across multiple data sources and reporting platforms. These included core operational and claims systems, financial systems, telephony data, Advanced Excel dashboards, Board reporting and Microsoft Power BI.

The organisation was also preparing to transition from its existing core operational platform to a new platform. This created an additional requirement to maintain consolidated reporting across both systems during the transition.

The organisation’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.

The organisation’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.

The 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.

The organisation was also preparing to migrate from its existing core operational platform to a new platform, requiring an architecture capable of maintaining consolidated reporting while both systems operated during the transition.

Key requirements included:

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

Eight workshops were held across operational reporting, Power BI, core operational systems, finance systems, existing reporting databases and 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 to implement a fully operational enterprise BI environment.

Following review by the organisation’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 the organisation’s operational and reporting environment.

The environment included core operational systems supporting claims and job information, financial systems and telephony data. Reporting was distributed across Advanced Excel dashboards, Board and Microsoft Power BI.

The review identified that reporting queries were being executed against a transactional database that also supported operational processing. This created concerns 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 the organisation 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 the organisation’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 the organisation’s core operational, financial and telephony systems.

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 the organisation 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 existing and replacement core platforms, financial information and historical telephony data.

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

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 clearer ownership and version control of KPI definitions. This recommendation directly addressed an issue highlighted by the organisation’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 the organisation’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 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 the organisation to develop a more governed reporting environment with clearer data ownership, consistent KPI logic and improved maintainability.

The engagement gave the organisation a documented and technically defined pathway for modernising its data management and business intelligence environment.

Key outcomes included:

The work was positively received by the organisation’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 its future data strategy. The resulting strategy was considered a valuable reference for the existing environment and provided practical recommendations for future planning.

The organisation required more than the development of individual reports. It 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 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 the organisation’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.