Bringing Staff Closer to the Business with Power BI
We spoke with Susan Ridehalgh, CFO for TTW
The Brief
With over 275 staff, across 4 offices in two countries, TTW is one of the largest structural engineering firms in Australia. As experts in complex engineering, some of their recent projects include the $500M Sydney headquarters for software giant Atlassian, and the award winning developments, Marrickville Library, a sustainable timber development, and Shell House, one of the world's tallest heritage façade redevelopments.
Having deployed two Synergy subscriptions to power projects of varying scales, TTW chose to adopt our Enterprise solution to significantly expand their reporting capabilities with Power BI.
Our brief was to develop a solution that would meet the needs of all teams. The management team needed better visibility of each office and how the group was operating as a whole, team leaders needed to be able to quickly see the performance of a range of projects, and engineers needed detailed project information at their fingertips.
“We chose ByltInsyte as they came highly recommended and because they had done this before. Why would we create something new? We’re engineers, not software developers.”
The Delivery
We started by providing a demo using real data from both Synergy subscriptions so that the Directors could see, first-hand, the potential of Power BI for Synergy. This allowed us to demonstrate that it was possible to handle the complex nature of combining data from two Synergy subscriptions into a single reporting solution, such as multi-currency reporting and intercompany projects.
A first-release was presented in just three weeks, in time for a planned management meeting, to introduce the wider organisation to Power BI for Synergy and to demonstrate how it would help them in their roles.
We delivered the core solution with multiple apps for the Board, Team Leaders & Engineers, and for central functions including Finance and Marketing. A customised security set-up ensured that each team had relevant information immediately available and in focus.
As with our Enterprise package, super-users within the company were identified and we provided them with specific tools and training on how to develop their own reports and ad-hoc analysis using the Power BI back-end capabilities.
“Our experience working with ByltInsyte was very good. Not only were they responsive and carefully considered our requests for change, the engagement has also provided us with some great ideas too. They have helped us find solutions to some of our more complex business process challenges.”
“Our experience working with ByltInsyte was very good. Not only were they responsive and carefully considered our requests for change, the engagement has also provided us with some great ideas too. They have helped us find solutions to some of our more complex business process challenges.”
The Delivery
We started by providing a demo using real data from both Synergy subscriptions so that the Directors could see, first-hand, the potential of Power BI for Synergy. This allowed us to demonstrate that it was possible to handle the complex nature of combining data from two Synergy subscriptions into a single reporting solution, such as multi-currency reporting and intercompany projects.
A first-release was presented in just three weeks, in time for a planned management meeting, to introduce the wider organisation to Power BI for Synergy and to demonstrate how it would help them in their roles.
We delivered the core solution with multiple apps for the Board, Team Leaders & Engineers, and for central functions including Finance and Marketing. A customised security set-up ensured that each team had relevant information immediately available and in focus.
As with our Enterprise package, super-users within the company were identified and we provided them with specific tools and training on how to develop their own reports and ad-hoc analysis using the Power BI back-end capabilities.
The Result
“The improvements Power BI has made for all staff, from Directors to Engineers, has been phenomenal.”
Power BI for Synergy is enabling TTW to answer questions immediately without having to second-guess information. They have gone from time-consuming in-house reporting with little flexibility to an information suite that is allowing them to make management decisions quickly and with detailed project information easily accessible for their engineers.
With fully automated reporting we have also helped TTW maintain a lean Finance team, who can focus on the core business, without the need for additional resources to produce reports.
The team regularly seeks internal feedback to steer improvements and developments, and with our Enterprise support in place, we are able to quickly incorporate these as and when they arise.
“Power BI for Synergy has significantly expanded our reporting capabilities. Within a few clicks we have an enormous amount of information available to us and we can analyse that information in moments.”
What’s Next?
With the Power BI platform now fully adopted, TTW continues to expand its use across the business from a simple timesheet reminder system to a solution to improve their invoice approval process.
We have created reporting capabilities for their Sustainability initiatives and the next step is to integrate with Hubspot CRM.
“Our vision is that everyone will have a Power BI dashboard to give them the information they need to bring them closer to the business.”
