Centralized Data Solution Saves Money and Grows Business
The VP of Operations at a Services company reached out to Prime 8 Consulting’s business intelligence experts to synthesize five key data silos across different departments.
Wrangling with Data Silos
Five department heads at the company came together to address one issue: a lack of a company-wide, centralized reporting system. As the company had grown, each department had developed its own siloed systems and processes for recording and reporting data — for instance, the sales team was utilizing a customer resource manager (CRM) platform to track pipeline. Human Resources was using a people tracking tool isolated from other departments and whose data was stale.
The VP of Operations wanted to bring departmental data into one central location. This would enable them to share data across a wider swath of people at the organization, but perhaps more importantly, it would ensure everyone was seeing the same, accurate data rather than having leadership teams arguing over which information was correct.
“Because of these data silos, there were a lot of people asking others for data that should’ve been easily accessible,” stated the Prime 8 engagement lead. “This was wasting massive amounts of time while people requested data, waited for it to come back and then verifying if it was accurate.”
While creating a centralized data hub would certainly save the company precious time and money, it would also empower leadership to quickly pull data to make informed decisions to drive business forward.
A Forward-Thinking Discovery Process
Leveraging their standard discovery process, the Prime 8 team began interviewing every stakeholder to understand what was most important to them and document requirements. Which KPIs would be most important to track? Who would need to be able to see these reports and how would they be using them? And from a high level, what data was most important to the business to track and visualize?
“We started having forward-thinking conversations with leadership where we’d show them the possibilities, asking them ‘wouldn't it be nice if you could do this?’”
Once the most valuable data had been identified and prioritized (for instance, those that would directly impact the growth of the business, or those that would impact other reports), Prime 8 scoped the project timeline and budget.
Unifying Key Data Sources
Prime 8 got to work diagramming systems that needed to be connected using an API. This included five main systems: a CRM, an HR people management system, financial management software, payroll software, and the Microsoft 365 suite of applications.
In designing and developing the solution, Prime 8 addressed several key business problems:
Elimination of manual processes. The HR department had been generating manual reports, downloading them as spreadsheets, and then converting these into decks monthly (and in some cases, weekly). This was an extremely time-consuming process that needed to be replaced with automation.
Visualization of data for quicker analysis. The team didn’t just want to make it easier to generate more accurate reports — they also wanted to help leadership understand data at a glance using interactive dashboards.
Unique data needs of multiple stakeholders. Each stakeholder required different calculations, formulas, and insights to do their job better.
Efficiently identify business issues and trends. Data silos across departments made it impossible to easily identify business practices leading to desired outcomes.
The Outcome
Within three months, Prime 8 had integrated five data silos into one centralized platform creating a Single Source of Truth (SST) and automated key repetitive processes. The feedback from stakeholders was unanimous: everyone was delighted, with some stakeholders even asking for additional reports they hadn’t previously considered in order to give them more insights. “There’s not a stakeholder I didn’t hear something positive from,” stated the Prime 8 engagement lead.
The client believes the accessibility of business insights will enable and foster a culture of innovation. “It’s not just the time or money we’re saving; we understood the different areas of our business were interconnected but having the data along with the insights at our fingertips has already inspired new creativity within our leadership team. You can’t improve what you can’t see.”
The VP of Operations highlights tangible and intangible ROI of this improvement in the following ways:
Stakeholders report a labor savings of up to 30 hours of work per week
Ability to consolidate three major apps’ worth of information into one centralized, user-friendly location
Preserve existing software investments by using utilizing Power BI to integrate systems
Eliminated the expensive process of “hunting down” data across multiple departments — anyone could access data based on their permissions level.
Significant CapEx savings by downgrading a level of service from one software program that had been providing reporting. Because the new solution provided improved reporting that merged data from multiple sources, there was no longer a need for a reporting tool within this one silo.
One of the most valuable outcomes of this project was its impact on each department’s ability to measure their own KPIs — and to utilize data from other departments to inform their own decision-making. The client needed to know, for example, how many people worked at the company along with key demographic data for these employees for compliance purposes. Instead of having to gather information manually from different managers, anyone could now log into the dashboard and pull that information out on their own in five minutes.
Another valuable benefit was the impact to the sales team. Previously it had taken 30 hours per month for a finance analyst to produce a reliable sales forecasting report. With the new Prime 8 solution in place, any salesperson could create an even more accurate report in minutes.
The lasting effect of this solution is the most promising: the client now has a reliable way to communicate facts and analyze data about their business in a solution that enables smoother, more efficient operations that will scale and evolve with their business.
Project Snapshot
Company Size: 100+ employees
Industry: Technology
Location: Washington, USA
The Challenge
Data silos, lack of data visualization, costly manual processes.
The Solution
A centralized, democratized data hub.
The Method: Prime 8 collaborated closely with key client stakeholders to identify which types of reporting were most important to them, while also considering the needs of the business. After identifying priorities, the team integrated five data sources into one centralized platform where anyone could access and analyze data in real time.
The Outcome: Countless hours of manual labor savings, CapEx savings, and the ability to drive business forward using accurate data.
