Advania - BI-reporting with the help of a modern data warehouse

The IT company Advania has implemented its BI-reporting using QuickBI’s data warehouse and consulting services. Combining data from various systems has significantly improved processes such as invoicing, service management, and customer service reporting. Taija Ranta, whom we interviewed, explains how QuickBI’s data warehouse has helped Advania tackle diverse reporting challenges.

Advania currently employs approximately 250 experts across multiple locations in Finland. The company provides a wide range of IT environments and digital workplace services, including cloud and data center services, continuity services, end-user services, and digital workplace solutions. Taija Ranta has been with Advania (formerly known as Valtti Kumppanit Oy) for over 15 years in various roles and has witnessed the company’s growth from a small enterprise of a few dozen employees to its current size. Ranta has been heavily involved in internal development and has spent about a decade focusing on reporting, as well as its coordination and development.

BI-reporting has become considerably easier and more efficient with the help of a modern data warehouse

In the beginning Advania used Qlik Sense and Qlik View for reporting. Now they have swapped over to using Power BI instead. When the company was smaller and its operations more modest, Qlik’s versatile functionality was sufficient for their needs at the time. However, at some point, it became necessary to look for more robust tools and a suitable data warehouse. It took quite some time before demand and supply aligned, and the price-to-quality ratio felt right. “This happened when we came across QuickBI,” Ranta says.

Advania aims to utilize reporting as broadly and efficiently as possible. New acquisitions further increased the demand for integrations and data linking of multiple systems within the same platform and the development in this area is still partially ongoing. However, in service management and invoicing reporting QuickBI’s data warehouse has already been in intensive use for quite some time. Current efforts are focused on improving sales and financial reporting to better meet present needs.

The data warehouse collects and consolidates data from numerous different systems

The QuickBI data warehouse receives data from various Advania’s data sources, including IT service management, customer service and feedback, as well as billing, production, and phone system data. Systems in use include the Efecte ITSM system, the Cuuma phone system, the PlanMill ERP system, the SurveyPal survey tool, as well as various other production systems. The data warehouse is used to combine data not only for internal purposes but also to serve customers. “We need data on the services and components our customers use so that we know how to help them improve their operations,” Ranta notes.

Data is brought into the data warehouse from multiple sources via API integrations, CSV dumps and direct database queries. Ranta explains that they have managed to pull data from all systems that either have an API or allow data to be exported. While some source systems are more challenging than others, solutions have been found with QuickBI. “We’ve been able to trust that if we provide QuickBI with system access and API credentials, we’ll get the data and reports we need,” Ranta says.

QuickBI provides Advania with consultation regarding data visualization

At Advania, data visualization is primarily done in close collaboration with QuickBI using Power BI. Most of Advania’s Power BI dashboards have been built by QuickBI. Ranta explains that report users themselves define the requirements as far as they are able, which naturally varies greatly from person to person. In some cases, QuickBI is given considerable freedom to visualize the report after providing initial specifications. In other cases, users already have a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, which can speed up the completion of the report. If the initial specifications are not well-structured in the beginning, collaboration is conducted with QuickBI consultants, and the report is developed through several iterations until it is deemed to have met specifications at an adequate level.

Customer service reporting has become easier and the need for manual work has decreased significantly

One of the most important areas of reporting at Advania is the customer service reporting. “We monitor things like response times for service requests, data measuring the quality of phone service, feedback for specific support requests, workloads, contact channels, and the number of service requests by customer or support group,” Ranta lists. With QuickBI, data from ITSM systems is combined with data from the phone system and feedback system to improve customer service quality and adjust resourcing as needed. By bringing the data into a single view, analysis becomes easier and faster.

Another advantage of using a data warehouse is that data from different systems is centrally visible in one place. For example, users can link customer data even when the identifier is different between systems.

All of Advania’s essential systems provide data to the QuickBI data warehouse, including information required for invoicing. Ranta explains that they are currently working on automating the export of this data from the data warehouse to the invoicing system. She considers the reduction of manual work as one of the most positive impacts of utilizing the data warehouse. Additionally, data integrated into the data warehouse can be used to enrich information, such as populating the CMDB (Configuration Management Database). These enriched views are then used to support production as well as helping to guide and accelerate operations at Advania.

Reports are also being designed for the direct use of customers

Advania aims to use the data warehouse to implement customer-centric reporting that is intended to be used by its customers directly. Templates and models have already been prepared internally. “We want to be as transparent as possible with our customers and make information related to them easily accessible,” Ranta says. Reports and data produced in collaboration with QuickBI have not yet been rolled out to customers in production, but Ranta believes this will happen before the end of the year. Currently, the primary users of customer-centric data are the service managers, who review the reports with customers during regular follow-up meetings.

The development of reporting continues in close collaboration

Advania adopted the QuickBI data warehouse product as early as 2017, although under a different name at the time. Taija Ranta notes that the collaboration has gone smoothly from the very beginning. Some report templates created in the early stages are still in use. Naturally, reports have been expanded and developed in many ways over the years, but the foundation laid in the early years has been continuously refined to better meet Advania’s changing needs.

“This year, we have built an even broader and clearer collaboration model,” Ranta explains. “QuickBI is deeply integrated into our operations and is an important part of handling reporting data. Combining data from different systems is always challenging due to the variations in the structure and quality of the data, but QuickBI has proven to be an effective solution, and we’ve addressed these challenges through successful collaboration.”