Birlasoft builds advanced data warehouse and analytics solution utilizing Microsoft Power BI and Google Cloud to improve decision-making across various departments at TMV Enterprises.
Over the last decade, analytics solutions have become a key priority in the strategic playbook of services businesses. Rapid growth of data has made it possible to drive better business decisions.
However, organizations have been leveraging legacy techniques to drive these results with data, which have proved inadequate with the growing volume, velocity, and complexity of data. TMV Enterprises, an American services company, was facing a similar challenge. Despite accelerated business growth, the organization was finding it difficult to make sense of its data and drive better decisions across Finance, Marketing, and Operations.
Most teams were still using Excel to process and analyze the data, which proved inefficient and spent countless man-hours. To mitigate these issues, TMV Enterprises engaged Birlasoft to modernize its data analytics function.
After undertaking a thorough assessment of the client’s existing technology stack and functional requirements, Birlasoft built a modern data warehouse on Google Cloud to power analytics use cases. We employed diverse teams in an offshore model to build KPI tracking and analytics solutions for our client. With Microsoft PowerBI, we developed intuitive dashboards and reports tailored for key decision-makers.
This led to unprecedented top-level, granular visibility into key business outcomes while enabling a solid data foundation for future analytics initiatives. Read the details of this engagement below.
The Challenge
#1. Lack of a single source of truth for business-critical data
In the absence of a data warehousing solution, business leaders managed critical operational data on their own machines. This led to discrepancies in the measurement of KPIs depending on who carried out the analysis. Moreover, this lack of a single source of truth undermined the trust in data and impeded scalability in driving data-based decisions.
#2. Use of legacy tools like Excel to process and analyze data for KPI tracking
TMV Enterprises lacked a consistent frontend tool to deliver analytics outcomes to business users. Most leaders used Excel to export and analyze data and built ad-hoc visualizations to track KPIs. This caused a loss of valuable human resources and detracted them from their strategic priorities.
#3.Building analytics use cases with limited or absent reference data
When TMV Enterprises did engage Birlasoft, they wanted to implement KPI tracking for 19 metrics, some of which had to be built with limited or absent reference data. This led to unpredictability and required technical teams to work with evolving reference data sets.
#4.Evolving business requirements over the course of engagement
TMV Enterprises was operating in a highly dynamic business environment, which meant that the reference data for validation evolved over time. In addition, the client's requirements also shifted over the course of the engagement as they sought to enhance their data management and reporting capabilities.
#5.Executing high-risk technical integrations with minimum SME support
Our client was leveraging ServiceTitan CRM for customer operations. Initially, it proved difficult for Birlasoft teams to identify source data fields with limited support from the source product SMEs. This raised the risk involved in technical integrations, which was mitigated by extensively studying product documentation.
To mitigate the above challenges, the client engaged Birlasoft to centralize their data management and bring standardization and methods to enable analytics at scale.
The Solution
At the start of the engagement, Birlasoft deployed a diverse team of 4 members which was ramped up to 12+ members.
The technical talent deployed by Birlasoft was highly diverse, originating from 6 different regions in the country – bringing their varied experiences and unique perspectives in the solutioning process. This diversity-first approach enabled us to deliver an innovative, robust, and optimal solution to our client.
#1. Assessment, road mapping, and technical solution architecture
Birlasoft began with a thorough assessment of the current technology estate of the client and collaborated with key stakeholders to define the business requirements from the data analytics solution. This was facilitated by leveraging the best tools and platforms to drive effective remote collaboration, which minimized the need for traveling to the client site. Efficient remote collaboration also enabled us to deliver the solution at competitive costs.
Early collaboration between business and technical teams was instrumental in aligning the expectations from the solution to the business objectives. Birlasoft also received unwavering support from business stakeholders throughout the period of engagement.
Following the assessment, Birlasoft proposed a comprehensive analytics solution based on Google Cloud Platform. We pitched a modern and scalable data warehouse based on Google BigQuery, with Cloud DataFlow and DataForm for other data management functions. This would serve as a modern and adaptable data foundation to power analytics use cases for TMV Enterprises.
#2. KPI definition and logic building with business users
Once the technical architecture was finalized, our team held working sessions to define the KPIs to be implemented. Through these discussions, 19 KPIs were identified as crucial for implementation. However, some complex metrics like Total Revenues, Gross Margin, Shop Supply Fee%, and Opportunities Job Average required additional efforts due to the complexity of the components used to derive them. Defining the business logic for these metrics enabled us to identify the dependencies and gaps in data availability. In addition, we also spotted opportunities for process improvements through data integration.
#3.Implementation of proposed solution architecture
The analytics solution was implemented in two phases. In the first phase, we focused on enabling marketing analytics with Google Analytics (GA4). And Operations and Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) with ServiceTitan CRM for Operations and FP&A dashboards. Due to limited support from the source product SMEs, our teams extensively studied the documentation and sought support from TMV’s CTO. This was crucial to identify source fields for ambiguous data points and deploy the right APIs to facilitate the integration.
To support the measurement of the required KPIs, Birlasoft designed and implemented a data warehouse from scratch in Google BigQuery. We also deployed Google Cloud DataFlow and DataForm to perform data transformations and preprocessing. This enabled standard, harmonized, and clean data in the warehouse, ready to be ingested by downstream analytics solutions.
We also set up database administration workflows, disaster recovery infrastructure, and right-sized underlying services to support large volumes of data at optimal cloud costs.
#4. Creation of persona-based granular dashboards on Microsoft PowerBI
Lastly, Microsoft PowerBI was chosen to deliver powerful visualizations of desired KPIs and metrics to business users. We devised intuitive visualizations using native PowerBI capabilities to help business leaders glean important information at a glance.
These PowerBI dashboards were tailored for Operations, Finance Planning & Analysis (FP&A), and Marketing functions, and provided the leadership teams with valuable insights, enabling them to make informed business decisions.
Impact delivered
The data management and analytics solution delivered by Birlasoft was a crucial step in advancing analytics maturity at TMV Enterprises. Moreover, the cloud-based solution offers a scalable, robust, and secure foundation to drive further analytics adoption.
In addition to this tactical advantage, the solution also enabled TMV Enterprises to realize the following business benefits.
#1. Bringing visibility into business-critical metrics
The solution enabled a standard, trusted, and scalable approach to capture critical business metrics. This brought visibility into key aspects of the business and enabled leaders to drive continuous improvements using the results. Moreover, our solution enabled the client to track complex KPIs that could not be calculated by users prior to the deployment.
#2. Comprehensive reporting capabilities
- A holistic view of multiple marketing web properties in a single dashboard with Integration of GA4 data. This brought valuable insights and measurability to marketing performance.
- The solution offers daily data updates to create trends and help business leaders make sense of inter-day changes in KPIs. This empowers timely data-driven responses at scale.
- Our PowerBI-based solution offers the scope of custom ad-hoc reporting. It offers the flexibility to generate custom reports based on the specific needs of business users.
- The solution offers future possibilities to scale and link Marketing data to Operations for a holistic Business view & better decision making. This would ensure that the solution could adapt to company's growing needs.
#3. Single source of truth for business-critical data
The centralized cloud-based data warehouse eliminated the confusion that arose from the discrepancies in data available to different business users. This reinforced trust in the metrics that were delivered with the PowerBI dashboards, and eliminated delays resulting from differences in measurements.
#4. Scalable and modern closed-loop architecture
The cloud-based solution leverages modern services to ingest, store, and manage the data. The solution scales well and is capable of adapting to the future requirements of a growing organization. In addition, Birlasoft teams placed a strong emphasis on long-term solution maintainability, by building extensive business and technical documentation for the solution.
#5. Efficiency improvements from standardization and automation
Before the solution was deployed, business users spent countless hours performing data exports, extraction, and computations manually in provisional tools like Excel. The data warehouse abstracted all of these tasks, automating data ingestion and pre-processing at scale. With the availability of analytics-ready data in BigQuery, and automated, reporting in PowerBI , our solution helped the client achieve significant productivity and efficiency improvements.
Customer Testimonial
“I wanted to take a quick moment to express my gratitude for all your dedication and hard work over the past months. The DNA project has been a game-changer for our company! Working directly with the leadership team, I’ve witnessed exceptional quality, professionalism, and expertise. Thank you for your ongoing efforts in shaping the future of our organization.”
Brian Bailey
CEO,TMV Enterprises
“Thank you so much for your perseverance and dedication over the last 7 months. Understanding Service Titan data - and how we use it - has been no easy task, but your team has excelled. Not only do you deliver high-quality solutions, but you also work seamlessly with our business partners. It’s rewarding to see the smiles when they experience the solutions that are live and upcoming. Looking forward to the coming months – we have a lot of great work in the pipeline!”
David Wheeler
Operating Partner, PMO, TMV Enterprises
