Deploying a Data Hub with Self-Service BI in 90 Days

Challenge

A mid-sized manufacturer’s CIO asked Trexin to help his small IT team and their internal finance customer quickly and inexpensively start using Microsoft’s cloud: a data hub with immediate self-service business intelligence and a path toward more advanced analytics.

Approach

Structured as a timeboxed project (8 weeks, later extended to 12) using two-week sprints and three parallel workstreams: business requirements and UI development in Power BI; cloud/data architecture and platform build in Azure; and a top-down data strategy and governance model. We configured Azure Synapse Analytics and an Azure Data Lake Storage (Gen2) foundation in staged bronze/silver/gold layers, using pipelines for raw ingestion and Spark notebooks for transformation.

Outcome

• End-to-end data movement from three source systems through Azure to Power BI by the end of the second sprint
• Aggregated data from 50+ source tables with 5-minute ERP refresh rates
• The VP of Financial Planning & Analysis could create and modify reports independently, work that previously needed IT and a 1.5-day turnaround
• A two-year data strategy and roadmap (governance and security included), with the Client’s team self-sufficient via explicit knowledge transfer

Why Trexin

There’s no AI without data you can trust. This is the foundation work that makes everything on top of it possible.