International companies that operate on large markets with numerous heterogeneous product groups are true reporting heavyweights. In order to still be able to draw on flexible reporting, solid cloud structures are required, which can easily scale, and, on the other hand, a sophisticated rights system must be established for report creation.
The Swedish SKF Group is active in the development and manufacture of bearings, seals and lubrication systems in more than 130 countries around the world. A major global corporation with a broad portfolio, ranging from small parts to huge plants in a wide range of industrial sectors. With our Snowflake database and connected Power BI reporting, the company is able to manage sales across the board for more than 130 employees.
How do I set up a modern cloud data warehouse?
How can data be made available to specialist areas at any time?
How do I design an automated reporting landscape for hundreds of employees?
By setting up a joint backlog, prioritizing stories and tasks, the sprint planning of the project took place at the end of each week. As a first step, the implementation of the database was started. It is based on a data model that is open to potential expansions. The unrestricted scalability of the Snowflake architecture combined with the unbeatably stable performance of the technology were decisive reasons for the decision.
A cloud-based Snowflake database provides the basis. Their major advantages include automatic scaling. It ensures an automatically adjusted ratio of required performance and costs. In an intelligent data mart (partial copy of the existing warehouse), a staging area ensures data quality in order to prevent diverging quality between warehouse and data mart.
In order to record and pre-plan the KPIs to be analyzed in the dashboard at an early stage in the data model, various Power BI training and coaching sessions were carried out. In this way, new findings and ideas could be constantly included in the planning within a feedback loop. The individual departments were trained by taod Consultants to visualize and create dashboards.
With the final cloud-based, automated sales controlling, around 150 specialist employees from SKF Germany are now managing analyses and reports. At the heart of this is the KPI dashboard created in Power BI, which has significantly reduced the workload for reporting. It provides an intuitive presentation that makes ongoing business much easier to interpret and understand.
The project shows how flexible, cloud-based technologies can also be used to create large automated reporting landscapes — from data warehouses to final use using Power BI dashboards. The motto has always been to allow different components to interlock and reduce friction. The combination of components should result in a uniform and reliable system as a technology stack. The principle of “avoid silos, enable central access” applies not only to data storage. Sales controlling is also dependent on designing reports on a holistic basis and available to all relevant employees.
SKF Deutschland GmbH wanted to set up automated and cloud-based sales controlling that would flexibly scale and be used centrally by many employees. The goal was a reporting landscape that consistently provides sales figures and significantly reduces manual reporting effort.
Prior to the project, SKF Deutschland GmbH lacked a solid cloud structure to rely on flexible reporting. At the same time, for an international reporting landscape, the company needed a robust rights system and an architecture that could scale with heterogeneous product groups and many users.
taod developed a cloud data warehouse based on Snowflake with connected Power BI reporting for SKF Deutschland GmbH. The solution comprises an open data model for later expansions, a data mart with staging area to ensure data quality, and a KPI dashboard for sales controlling.
The introduction was agile with an MVP approach, a joint backlog, prioritized stories and iterative sprint planning. Parallel to setting up the Snowflake database, taod Power BI conducted training and coaching so that departments could introduce KPI requirements at an early stage and later work independently with the dashboards.
Today, around 150 sales employees and management from three countries use the Power BI dashboard. The standardized dashboard was rolled out in less than 12 weeks, provides over 150 international locations with central reporting and reduced reporting times in management by more than 70 percent.
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