Customer Solution Case Study
/ Digital Experience Studio Uses Business Intelligence to Make Data-Driven Decisions
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Professional services—Software engineering
Customer Profile
Vectorform is a digital experience studio withsix global locations including its headquarters in Royal Oak, Michigan. Its 100 employees address strategy, design, and technology.
Business Situation
Vectorform wanted to improve its business intelligence and decision making. It also sought to save time on data management while integrating data from different sources.
Solution
Vectorform upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, generating reports using the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel technology.
Benefits
Single view of the company
More accurate decisions
Improved resource allocation
Timesavings and improved security
Engaging visuals / “Now that we have the tools, in the form of SQL Server 2008 R2, our business intelligence analysis today is on a fast track.”
Charles Spadafore, Director of Operations, Vectorform
Vectorform, a global digital experience studio, wanted to improve its business intelligence (BI) capabilities. The company had data in several mission-critical applications and lacked an easy and secure way to distribute appropriate and current BI data to employees. To fill that void, Vectorform implemented Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and began generating reports using the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel technology. The company uses the new software to pull BI data from disparate sources, making it instantly and securely available in attractive charts that support data-driven decisions. With these more effective decisions, Vectorform has improved its project acceptance, hiring decisions, and resource allocation. Vectorform has also increased efficiency in report production by more than 25 percent.
Situation
From mobile applications that fit in the palm of a hand to software used by Fortune 500 companies, Vectorform creates cutting-edge interactive solutions. With 100 employees in six global locations, the Vectorform team spans strategy, design, and technology. Its solutions can be seen on the web, mobile devices, gaming consoles, and multitouch platforms, and in custom applications and in-vehicle solutions.
Vectorform does all of its business intelligence (BI) and strategic work internally. “Right now my main goal is maximizing our BI,” says Charles Spadafore, Director of Operations at Vectorform. “In the past, we have been a little bit soft in that area. We didn’t have the tools, and we struggled to get the right data to the right people with the right security without building an internal application.”
Vectorform uses BI in addressing many strategic, mission-critical issues. For example, says Kurt Steckling, President of Vectorform, “Do we have the capacity to bid on a certain job? And as we allocate resources across the organization, does this project need three designers—or three designers located in the city of Seattle? It’s always been a challenge to get the right information. We needed better flexibility in our reporting.”
Vectorform had data in time-tracking applications, internally built resource allocation tools, billing pipelines, and human resources databases. “We had a lot of information that needed to be encrypted, yet we also had information that needed to be shared across the company,” Spadafore says. “For example, we like to share billing information and company profitability with everybody, but we obviously don’t want to share information such as salary or pay rates.”
Although Vectorform used Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition data management software, much of this BI data was managed by external applications like SugarCRM, customer relationship management software that uses MySQL database software. “They just didn’t interoperate effectively with other software packages,” says Spadafore. “It was very hard to pull out data, and creating reports was tedious. The security issues were particularly cumbersome.” Spadafore would often have to create reports out of the time-tracking and invoicing applications, cut and paste numbers from PDF documents, create filters, manage tables, and finally generate a chart with the information he needed. “It was really a pain,” he says.
Furthermore, it was not ideal to have so much data dependent on Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet software, which Spadafore was using to generate the reports. “We’d really outgrown the spreadsheet-driven environment,” Spadafore says. “We would try to have one read-only copy of a file in a single place on a secure network, but we’d still have inconsistencies. People would update, not save, or lock the file; you’d have to ask a colleague to close a file so you could update it.” Additionally, Office Excel 2007 charts were not very visually appealing to a firm full of creative designers.
Vectorform wanted new data management and reporting software that could improve its business intelligence, pull information from multiple sources, and save time managing security and other internal issues.
Solution
In January 2010, Vectorform learned about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. “We were asked to build some interactive materials for the launch of Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel,” says Spadafore. “When we learned how SQL Server 2008 R2 powered the database to produce these BI tools, we were sold on making the upgrade internally.”
Vectorform installed a beta version of the software in February 2010. “Installation was super-smooth,” Spadafore says. “It took longer for us to get the hardware requisition than to get everything installed.” About 75 percent of the company’s production environment is now converted, with the rest scheduled for late June 2010.
SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel is an in-memory technology that employees can use to analyze and combine data. With PowerPivot for Excel, users can create workbooks that assemble and relate hundreds of millions of rows of data from virtually any source. Furthermore, they can do this work using the familiar Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software interface. Spadafore generally creates reports using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services, in a process that’s far more streamlined than before. “I’m just providing a starting point,” Spadafore says. “Then users can filter data however they want.”
Employees can use another technology, Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Microsoft SharePoint, to display reports and workbooks with Excel Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. (Vectorform has also installed beta versions of SharePoint Server 2010 and Excel 2010.) “All a person has to do is choose a project and then select a specific report, and SQL Server 2008 R2 generates it automatically,” Spadafore says.
SQL Server 2008 R2 interacts with the Active Directory service to control data security. “We have user access based on Active Directory credentials, which makes managing security really easy,” Spadafore says.
When users manipulate data, they can use features of PowerPivot for Excel such as the data relational capabilities of the Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) language, which can create dynamic aggregations among multiple tables of data. They can also use new features of Excel 2010, such as slicers, which are visual controls that help interactively filter data, and sparklines, which are intense, simple, word-sized graphics.
Spadafore has also created SharePoint Server 2010 dashboards that highlight new business opportunities and individual performance using data from SQL Server 2008 R2. Vectorform will build new internal applications that will use SQL Server 2008 R2 data to better manage proposal calculations by matching a new proposal to historical data.
Benefits
Vectorform uses SQL Server 2008 R2 to consolidate business intelligence data, which leads to better decisions, especially about resource allocation. It uses SQL Server 2008 R2 to save time in reporting processes and to generate attractive charts.
Single View of the Company
Vectorform uses SQL Server 2008 R2 to pull mission-critical data from disparate sources. All employees now work with the same data, rather than with copies of spreadsheets that can soon become outdated. “Now that we have set up our applications to run on SQL Server 2008 R2, we don’t have any inconsistencies,” Spadafore says. “Although that can be said about any SQL solution compared to a flat file or XML table, I must say that it has made a big difference for us.”
Furthermore, SQL Server 2008 R2 has reduced the company’s reliance on Spadafore as an individual. “When the head of the Seattle office needs something, he needs it right away—but if it’s late in his day, I’m already home with the kids,” Spadafore says. “Now he has real numbers readily available in SQL Server 2008 R2 without having to call me to ask for a report.”
More Accurate Decisions
Vectorform uses SQL Server 2008 R2 to improve its BI. “Now that we have the tools, in the form of SQL Server 2008 R2, our business intelligence analysis today is on a fast track,” says Spadafore. “I have my own development team using the Microsoft tools to analyze BI.”
With better information, Vectorform makes better decisions. “We are a data-driven company,” Spadafore says. “Kurt Steckling, our president, doesn’t like operating on hunches, thoughts, ideas, or opinions. He wants data. Now that we can use data from SQL Server 2008 R2 to substantiate our decisions, their accuracy increases exponentially.”
Improved Resource Allocation
Many of those improved decisions are in the area of resource allocation. “Using data from SQL Server 2008 R2, we can streamline our project acceptance and hiring processes,” Spadafore says. “We know what resources are free at what time, who’s double-booked, and who can take on more work.”
Data is particularly valuable in hiring decisions. “When you have a good person on the line, nine times out of ten, multiple companies are interested in hiring that person. So we have to make that decision quickly. To do so, we need data that’s quick, accurate, and readily available. SQL Server 2008 R2 definitely gives it to us.”
Time Savings and Improved Security
SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services automates the production of reports that used to take Spadafore a great deal of time. “One of the biggest benefits of SQL Server 2008 R2 is timesavings for me and for other staff members,” Spadafore says. He estimates that report production time has been cut by 25 percent.
In addition to automating the process of producingreports, SQL Server 2008 R2 automates the solutions to many of the security issues that bedeviled Spadafore in previous attempts to spread BI through the company. “Because SQL Server 2008 R2 integrates with Active Directory, we can control security at the user level,” he says. “We have one place to control who has access to what. There’s no need to create additional groups or users in a different application.”
Engaging Visuals
Vectorform employees involved in BI get to make their decisions using rich, appealing, substantive graphics. “The charts that anybody can make with SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel can end up looking like one of the sophisticated applications that Vectorform develops,” says Spadafore. “Instead of your typical white background with gridlines, charts in SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel are charts that people actually want to view.”
Spadafore emphasizes the attractiveness of the charts. “They’re creative, and yet the creativity drives meaningful functionality. There’s real substance to what you’re looking at. As numbers change, as trends show themselves in a SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel chart, it becomes exciting to look at. Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel charts are pleasing to the eye and easy to read, and they look good in publications. They’re visually engaging.”
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers higher scalability for mission-critical environments, more efficient IT, and expanded reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence.
For more information about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, go to: