Scaling the Reporting Capability of Synergy for Alexander Symonds
We spoke with Beau Thorley, Director & Licensed Surveyor
The Brief
Based in South Australia, Alexander Symonds is a land surveying consultancy with specialist knowledge in residential and commercial construction, development, engineering, mining and infrastructure. Some of their recent projects include the Adelaide Riverbank Precinct Redevelopment and Adelaide Oval Construction.
Managing thousands of projects and over 130 field staff, a client referral prompted the company to roll out Synergy to improve the quality of data going into the business to enhance the value of the information coming out.
With Synergy in the process of being deployed across all companies and offices, our brief was to put in place a scalable solution that would fully automate Synergy reporting requirements that could be developed as business needs change.
“Implementing Power BI at the time we introduced Synergy was important because it meant there would be no room for bad habits to be introduced into our workflow.”
“In the past, team leaders would get reports from people telling them what to look at. Now they have a dashboard with a handful of key metrics telling them where they are going and where the flags are without having to go looking for them.”
The Delivery
Finding actionable insight in pools of questionable data is a challenge for many project-based businesses. Alexander Symonds needed a solution to bring information to the forefront of their decision making and, at the same time, help them identify and address data quality issues so that the information could be relied upon.
We delivered the Power BI solution in stages. Initially, we focussed on developing a suite of reports and dashboards for the Board of Directors covering the areas of business, sales, projects and people performance. Connecting our out-of-the-box solution with their Synergy subscription helped the Board quickly understand what information was available and then identify the priority content that we could bring to life.
The second stage was to introduce a dashboard for Team Leaders followed by a dedicated app with information specific to the area of the business they are responsible for. This roll-out was aligned to an update in the organisation's roles and responsibilities defined as part of their new business strategy.
Weekly calls kept the project on track, and our background in consulting meant discussions went beyond standard reporting requirements. We were able to explore broader business objectives and translate these into decision-enabling reports and analytics.
The Delivery
Finding actionable insight in pools of questionable data is a challenge for many project-based businesses. Alexander Symonds needed a solution to bring information to the forefront of their decision making and, at the same time, help them identify and address data quality issues so that the information could be relied upon.
We delivered the Power BI solution in stages. Initially, we focussed on developing a suite of reports and dashboards for the Board of Directors covering the areas of business, sales, projects and people performance. Connecting our out-of-the-box solution with their Synergy subscription helped the Board quickly understand what information was available and then identify the priority content that we could bring to life.
The second stage was to introduce a dashboard for Team Leaders followed by a dedicated app with information specific to the area of the business they are responsible for. This roll-out was aligned to an update in the organisation's roles and responsibilities defined as part of their new business strategy.
Weekly calls kept the project on track, and our background in consulting meant discussions went beyond standard reporting requirements. We were able to explore broader business objectives and translate these into decision-enabling reports and analytics.
“In the past, team leaders would get reports from people telling them what to look at. Now they have a dashboard with a handful of key metrics telling them where they are going and where the flags are without having to go looking for them.”
The Result
“Our previous system didn't have the reliable information we need and we didn't have that information automated. It was hard to get at.”
Synergy and Power BI has helped transform the way Alexander Symonds values its information. With Power BI for Synergy’s near real-time dashboards and interactive reporting capabilities, the team now have the tools they need to make informed decisions with confidence in the quality of the data.
“We’ve just finished onboarding all our companies and projects; we’re growing with this, absolutely.”
What’s Next?
Having made the investment in the Power BI platform, Alexander Symonds plans to incorporate their new HR system, Employment Hero, and we're excited to work with them over the coming weeks to further develop the people side of their reporting and analytics.
“We used to have to go looking for the potential issues. Now, the systems tell us where the potential issues are. We’ve gone from fairly limited information to having access to a lot of really useful information.”
