Leading Food Distributor Boosts Insights with Atlassian & Microsoft
Overview: Building An Integrated Data Ecosystem
A leading grocery and food service supply chain provider struggled with how to build an integrated data ecosystem that enabled them to convert raw data into actionable insights. The organization needed a way to retrieve data from Atlassian’s Jira Software and Assets and create valuable, up-to-date reports displayed in Microsoft SharePoint.
The team worked with Praecipio to develop a data management framework that connected their Atlassian and Microsoft systems and delivered timely enterprise intelligence to leadership.
Challenge: Data Silos Lead to Poor Decisions
Like many organizations, this distributor relies on different systems to get work done. They use Jira Software for project management, Atlassian Assets for tracking company assets, and Microsoft tools for organizational communication.
The organization's project managers were manually pulling data from Jira Software and Assets and then creating reports with spreadsheets and decks. By the time the executive team received these reports, the data was stale. Not only were project managers wasting time manually creating reports, but the inaccurate data they shared led to poor decision-making.
The team needed a way to aggregate data from their Atlassian tools so that leadership could visualize real-time insights in SharePoint and make timely, intelligent decisions.
Solution: Real-Time Dashboards with PowerBI and SharePoint
The organization knew what reports they needed, but they didn’t know how to create them, especially when different platforms were involved. They reached out to Praecipio to help them optimize their systems for data collection and build the following reports:
- PMO - To see project status, how many projects teams are working on, who is sponsoring what project, and any issues that need resolving.
- Change - To have visibility into upcoming software changes and understand the scope of those changes.
- Asset - To view thousands of company assets (phones, computers, handheld devices) and understand their current status.
Praecipio connected the company's Atlassian and Microsoft systems with a PowerBI integration using AlphaServe’s (now Tempo) PowerBI Connector for Jira. This tool enables data analysts to choose what data to feed to PowerBI with minimal configuration. PowerBI then helps organize that data and layer reports on top of it. From there, that information is fed into SharePoint, providing stakeholders with single-pane-of-glass reports to view and analyze.
With access to real-time data, leadership can now quickly see the status of ongoing work and if any issues need to be resolved. Also, because the reports were designed with interconnectivity in mind, teams can go to Jira Software and find out more details related to the insights displayed in SharePoint.
Additionally, Praecipio provided a knowledge transfer to the company, guiding their teams on how to keep the reports working and troubleshoot if necessary.
Results: Improved Visibility & Improved Decision Making
Since implementing the PowerBI solution, this leading food and beverage distributor has saved their teams hundreds of hours per month, which also translates to reduced costs. With better visibility into the status of work execution, our customer has also experienced improvements in decision-making.
After a successful engagement, the company gave Praecipio a Net Promoter Score of 10 out of 10. In addition to completing the work in three weeks, the Praecipio team went the extra mile to provide the team with additional recommendations and perform a gap analysis.