The Introduction:

The client, an international information communication and telecommunication company was operating a global agency catering to the dynamic needs of the communications industry. As the client operated in a rapidly growing and diversified industry, dealing with vast amounts of proprietary and critical business data was extremely crucial for making important business decisions. Hence, the client wanted robust data management and business intelligence solution that could cater to its data requirements.

Challenges

The client already had a system in place that was turning out to be obsolete and inefficient in managing a vast amount of uncontrolled data. The main challenges faced by the client were associated with:

• Data extraction logic and database performance due to colossal amounts of data and lengthy process for data extraction.
• Inadequate performance of the current solution due to the availability of fewer reports, file duplication issues, data redundancy and inefficiency in report creation for multiple periods.
• Inability to change the UI themes for subsidiary/client agencies based on user login.
• Lousy security features due to data and file duplication process.
• Inefficient and cumbersome user management process due to multiple servers and agencies.

The Solution

Team Stridely worked with the client’s team closely to understand its existing database management structure and devise modular data management and business intelligence solution. Based on the inputs of the client and keeping in mind the future needs of the company, Stridely deployed Infobright database platform to deal with the data needs of the business.

Being an enterprise database solution with columnar architecture, Infobright allows businesses to perform logical operations on available data and derive smart business insights.

Stridely empowered the client to store large amounts of data efficiently, perform complex queries on available data, and streamline operations. Here are some of the ways Stridely overcame the challenges faced by the client:

• Existing data were first normalized and populated for reuse using ETL philosophy of extracting, transforming and loading of data from existing source to the new system (Data Warehouse). This led to an incremental increase in the performance of the systems.
• All the reports and dashboards were tweaked and fine-tuned for solving the core performance issues.
• Custom and dynamic parameters were built and employed that would change according to the user rights and login credentials. This ensured that the files and data are not duplicated again and again.
• Multiple parameters for different periods were developed to deal with the file redundancy problem.
• CSS-based UI themes were designed and deployed with accurate user-mapping so that a custom theme gets loaded based on the user login credentials.
• Secure user management was deployed to accelerate the process of role-based access required by the agencies.
• Existing plugins were enhanced to display logical solution repository structure based on the role of the logged-in user.
• Sub admins were given audit trail functionality to track all activities on solution repositories.
• Parameter mapping report was incorporated in the solution which allowed users to load mapping reports based on specific parameters.
• Bi-directional SQL replication system was deployed for report and dashboard servers. This eliminated the need for multiple user creation across different servers, reducing the load on servers and boosting the performance of the system.
• Data Warehouse maintenance activity on weekly basis in perspective of performance.
• Row Level Security for accessing data based on User login.

Tools

• Microsoft SQL Server 2016
• Microsoft Services –
  • SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
  • SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
  • SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) – Multi Dimensional Model
• Microsoft Power BI.

Results

The smart business intelligence solution led to a progressive increase in data management productivity and performance. Due to the streamlined nature of the deployment, there was minimal disruption in the customer service operations. Owing to the successful deployment of the advanced solution, more and more agencies began demanding the solution to be deployed for their internal operations, too.

• Reduction in the chances of system outage due to bugs and errors to less than 2%
• Faster report and dashboard: execution in less than 30 seconds
• Incremental transition and scope of work led to higher user satisfaction rates
• Report accessible from anywhere with 99.99% of availability