Working with IJYI as a delivery partner, a total rework of the Society’s reporting solution was delivered. This solution was based on industry-leading Microsoft technologies

The high-level business requirements were:

• Cost effective solution: Implement a cost-effective solution using the data already existing in several core systems which lack consolidation
• Increase Agility: Increase agility and reduce time to market of reporting solutions
• Leverage Azure Services: Opportunity to leverage technology to take advantage of integration points with other services will reduce complexity of future use cases around Reporting Services.

The Process

Ipswich Building Society and IJYI employed Agile processes, working collaboratively from requirement gathering through to build, test and deployment of their new MI reporting capability.

Phase 1 – Discovery

Phase 1 of the project involved IJYI running an onsite Discovery exercise. Two members of the IJYI project team undertook a comprehensive study over several weeks to understand the current environment and risks in order to propose a new technology solution and improved working practices.

Phase 2 – Stabilisation

Phase 2 began with the IJYI development team working to improve the stability of the existing environment to gain some short-term improvements before moving on to the main project.

Phase 3 – Data transformation project

The team built the new database environment which ran alongside the existing infrastructure and used sample data to prove the functionality.

Once it was agreed that the new environment was stable the first reports were pulled from the system and a roadmap of reporting was rolled out.

Phase 4 – Knowledge transfer

It was important for Ipswich Building Society to be able to fully manage and support their new reporting system. At the end of the project a detailed handover took place to ensure that the Society’s team were fully ready to take on the day to day management of the reporting system.

The project is successfully delivering a new, enterprise ready reporting solution. With a more automated process, the reliance of manual intervention has been reduced and up to date functionality means that the Society can maximise the benefits of ongoing and future digital transformation.

Technologies used

Microsoft PowerBI
Azure data services