Business Intelligence services for Construction company

Executive Summary

Our customer is a 100 year old, billion-dollar US based Construction Company providing an extensive selection of bridge, drainage, earth stabilization & storm water solutions. The customer had acquired a number of other companies over past decade and thus had over 40 different applications. ennovate’s engagement with the customer began with supporting their software applications on Microsoft .NET technology.

Gradually, ennovate’s team demonstrated their expertise on Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Great Plains (GP) software through pilot projects assigned by the customer and won the confidence of the customer to customize their existing CRM and ERP systems. ennovate was also instrumental in saving significant cost in technology investment by suggesting appropriate Business Intelligence tools for customer requirements.

For past 2 years, ennovate has served as a technology offshoring wing of this construction giant by offering complete IT services in Microsoft technologies like .Net, Biztalk Server, SharePoint Server, PerformancePoint Server and Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Great Plains.

The Customer

Our customer offers a wide array of innovative solutions for both initial development and rehabilitation of existing structures and sites. Their involvement with products and applications is founded on a century of research and practical field experience. Their products provide effective site solutions for projects with a variety of loading conditions, foundation requirements, soil and water environments as well as varied installation demands.

The Challenge

• Dispersed data from 4 different systems and 7 different databases
• Inconsistency in presentation of data
• Lack of company-wide view of data for decision making
• Lack of clarity on right BI Tool
• Licensing cost constraints
• Validating data from source system reports against the reports generated from Data Warehouse

The Solution

• ennovate used SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) to consolidate data
• We conducted detailed study on actual reporting against dashboard requirements with end-users. We came up with analysis on different tools and options showing pros/cons of each and our recommendation of using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), which was implemented
• Our consultation resulted in:
  • Saving on licensing cost of tools
  • Removal of constraints in existing implementation
• We suggested and implemented a strategy for data validation and report verification for correctness of data

The Technology

• Hyperion Essbase
• Hyperion Financial Reporting
• SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
• SQL Server Analysis Service (SSAS)
• Microsoft Performance Point Server

The Benefits

• Better financial tracking through CXO and Operational dashboards
• Secure access to the dashboards and reports
• Centralized source of reporting
• Cost savings on licensing through SQL Server solution

Customer Testimonial

“ennovate has done an excellent job in understanding a business finance issue, designing a solution, and planning for the future, resulting in many game-changing successes for us in Business Intelligence. I recommend ennovate and look forward to many successful projects with them”

- Business Intelligence Director, Construction Industry