Case Study – Abylon

Case Study: Sales planning automation

Zoltán Zicherman — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:15:49 +0000

Below, you’ll find a detailed case study that offers an inside look into a planning automation project we recently executed for a major software company. For this edition, we’ve opted for a more narrative approach to provide a personal and insightful perspective. We hope you find this storytelling format both enjoyable and informative.

Project Background

Sales planning can be a daunting task, one that Julie knew all too well as she stared at the 22nd Excel file that had landed in her inbox that day. The seemingly never-ending process required intricate calculations involving #deferrals, #sales, and #revenues, all of which were pivotal to the sales team, and therefore the whole company’s success.

In a software company where sales were tied to various software licenses, the complexity of sales planning was undeniable. For Julie and the rest of the colleagues involved in planning, this process was slow, ineffective, involved a lot of manual work and to put it nicely, it was far from enjoyable.

Business Challenge: Data Preparation and Calculation Complexity

The first challenge lay in the preparation of historical data for each customer group. It was no simple task. Sales representatives had to input the number of units to be sold, but Excel couldn’t instantly recalculate what this meant for Sales Amount and Revenue Amount. This meant that both Sales Amount (Quantity * Price) and Revenue (Sales Amount +/- Deferrals) had to be calculated for every planning period. Furthermore, sales teams had to predict Renewal rates and Price increases for each product in their region, which directly impacted historical data.

The enormity of this task became apparent, especially for customer groups with hundreds of thousands of records requiring calculations. Excel, on its own, couldn’t handle the complexity.

Exploring Solutions

Two major directions were considered to tackle this challenge: bringing the planner closer to the “tech” or bringing the “tech” closer to the planner.

Bringing the planner closer to the “tech”:

This approach involved having planners embrace new technologies. However, it was evident that not everyone was tech-savvy, and expecting them to learn new technologies for a process that wasn’t their primary focus seemed impractical.

Bringing the “tech” closer to the planner:

This approach aimed to provide a user-friendly interface for planners. While promising, it raised questions about design, tabular data handling, frontend development resources, and the learning curve for planners. Questions like:

what kind of design should we use?
how should one address the tabular data? Save each line? Recalculate on every mouse-move?
how can we display effectively more than one kind of tables which are related to each other?
how many hours of a Front-End development is needed, when will they be available?
who will create the design?
how will the planners learn the logic of the new design, and the new frontend, if it’s not intuitive enough?

By choosing Excel as the frontend, we addressed many of these concerns.

Our Solution

Given the complexity of the project it seemed a perfect case for Abylon Rapid Planner – the planning module of the Abylon Rapid Platform.

The Rapid Platform itself is a flexible, enterprise grade productivity platform for building Microsoft Data Warehouse or Data Lake based analytical solutions. On top of the platform, we created easy-to-deploy business solutions for the most common BI and data analytics scenarios.

The planning module we used in this case includes enterprise-grade financial and analytical planning, master data management, querying and scenario-analysis.

Abylon Rapid Planner offers Excel’s functionality scaled to the enterprise level. Database connections, automated data validation and easy business template creation – all to minimize manual work.

Implementing Abylon Rapid Planner effectively resolved all the key issues, with the exception of incoming data cleaning, as per the client’s decision due to ongoing source system discussions.

Results

With the Abylon Rapid Platform, everyone can access their relevant data from within Excel securely. Unauthorized access is prevented, ensuring data integrity.

Once data is provided, recalculation happens instantly, eliminating manual work. This has a profound impact on reducing manual tasks during planning and forecasting periods, as well as significantly reducing waiting times for Sales Planners.

The platform simplifies the entire planning process. It eliminates manual data sending, consolidation, and recalculation. Custom data validations ensure data consistency, and plan versions can be easily tracked. The result is increased confidence in data accuracy and alignment with approved plans.

No additional automatization process or consolidation is needed in order to provide data to a Business Intelligence system, since the data is already organized and stored in a database, and is ready to be ingested.

The Abylon Rapid Platform offers a central master data management solution. It removes the need for manual updates, ensuring data consistency across the board.

Our platform provides ETL functionality (like mass upload) within Excel and beyond. It streamlines data upload and integration, eliminating the need for external ETL services.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Abylon Rapid Platform revolutionizes sales planning by addressing the challenges faced head-on. It ensures data accuracy, reduces manual work, and streamlines the planning workflow. Say goodbye to complex Excel files and embrace a more efficient, user-friendly approach to sales planning!

If you’re ready to transform your sales planning process, contact us today to learn more about how Abylon Rapid Platform can benefit your organization.

For more information check out some of our other blogposts about the Rapid Platform and our FP&A solution Abylon Rapid Planner:

The post Case Study: Sales planning automation appeared first on Abylon.

Case Study: IFRS evaluation based on mass user input

Zoltán Zicherman — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 12:10:45 +0000

About our client

Our client, MKK Zrt. (Hungarian Claims Management Center), is a leading player in the Hungarian receivable management market. As a comprehensive manager of receivables, MKK Zrt. specializes in managing both retail and business receivables, as well as engaging in factoring (financing) activities. Essentially, they purchase various claims and endeavor to recover them.

The work involved in our client’s sector typically requires substantial manual effort from case managers and controllers, prompting a need for a solution to streamline and automate these processes.

Business Challenge

MKK manages claims that are assessed based on their purchase price and face value. Following this assessment, case managers must estimate the expected cash flow from each claim. Previously, the financial control team expended significant effort on manual tasks associated with forecasting claim management.

The process for managing each claim was the following:

The controller requests the factual data from the system and enters it into an Excel file
The spreadsheet is sent out to the case manager via email or uploaded into a file share
The case manager sends back the necessary claim data within a certain deadline (if this happens slowly, the factual data might need to be updated)
In their own Excel file, the controller edits, consolidates and calculates data, creating the necessary case value
There is no validation, whether the case manager accidentally or on purpose changed the fact data
The calculation is double-checked by the controller

Typically, processing each claim could take up to two hours, not including additional time for validation checks, which added several more hours to verify factual data and calculations for hidden values or functions.

With around 80-100 custom claims, the time spent on manual and inefficient tasks was substantial, particularly during high-stress periods like the financial year-end.

Moreover, it was always questionable if the current version of the Excel file is the final one or not.

Another concern was the auditors’ desire for a more secure tool, as Excel’s “open” nature allowed unrestricted data modifications (anybody can add or edit the data).

Solution

The project was divided into two sub-projects built upon each other. Initially, Abylon had completed a classic BI project for MKK, migrating data to a new database, which served as the foundation for these subsequent projects. This new database was the foundation of these two projects.

Phase I. - Creating a paginated report using SSRS technology

We developed a paginated report for group claims by re-creating all data and calculations from the initial Excel files, such as IFRS-based claim evaluations and net present value (NPV) reports, using SQL calculations.

This resulted in an Excel report displaying only the numbers, with the underlying calculations hidden. However, the auditors’ lack of SQL knowledge made this solution a but of a “black-box” to them.

Phase II. - Individual claim management using Abylon Rapid Planner

Here the primary goal was to create the Excel files employing standard ETL technology (e.g., SSIS) iat a specific time, similarly to the group claims, but with some additional information (there are multiple weighted values for the expected cash flow).

A customized Excel template was developed for case managers using Abylon Rapid Planner, automatically populating it with factual data. Case managers then added necessary claim data received from debtors.

The evaluation conducted within the same template now included visible calculations in Excel, generated by SQL for formulas and cell references, enhancing process transparency and comprehensibility.

Results

The new setup significantly eased the controllers’ workload by automating several steps in the process and saving considerable time previously spent on monotonous, repetitive manual tasks. Moreover, the adoption of Rapid Planner significantly increased the transparency of the whole process.

With the new system:

The first two stages of the case evaluation process is fully automated saving a lot of time.
The work of the auditors is easier. They work with generated data – which means it can’t really be messed up.
A specialized report tracks claim and data submissions.
Greater transparency is achieved as all calculations and formulas are visible.

About our Financial Planning Solution

If your company relies on Excel for financial planning and forecasting, consider our solution, Abylon Rapid Planner. It enhances the familiar functionality and flexibility of Excel, scaling it to meet enterprise-level needs, ideal for spreadsheet-based financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and control across businesses of all sizes.

For more information check out some of our other blogposts about the Rapid Platform and our FP&A solution Abylon Rapid Planner:

The post Case Study: IFRS evaluation based on mass user input appeared first on Abylon.

Case Study: Advanced Analytics on top of a legacy on-prem DWH

Zoltán Zicherman — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 10:50:09 +0000

Introduction

In this post we’re going to describe an advanced analytics project we recently delivered for a large international company. The main goal of the project was to improve the management of our client’s retail data (sales data coming from their shops) by adding an additional advanced analytics platform on top of the existing infrastructure.

Business Challenge

Prior to this project all retail data was only managed by a large, traditional, monolith on-prem SQL data warehouse. Data coming from this legacy data warehouse is aggregated and presented in pre-made group-level dashboards which are limited and highly dependent on report developers. Accessing more detailed data or data outside of these dashboards, or creating custom reports based on it would require a lot of effort.

This rigid infrastructure was not suitable for advanced analytics which requires dynamic data and an option for self-service business intelligence (BI). Furthermore, our client has other BI solutions that would also require this type of dynamic data.

Solution – Advanced Analytics Platform with Azure Synapse and Databricks

We built a new, cloud-based (Azure Synapse-based) data warehouse on top of the existing on-premise data warehouse and connected it to the existing Databricks (DBX) Platform. We extract the raw data from the on-prem data warehouse on a daily basis and make it accessible in our new Advanced Analytics Platform.

The new platform consists of two separate sub-platforms:

A Databricks (DBX) Platform for development and Business Value Realization solutions (for self-service development)
A Synapse Platform for transactional level analysis (for self-service analysis)

The Databricks Platform is a self-service development platform that uses Python, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence technology. It’s mainly meant for internal developers for forecasting and creating various data science solutions, and for external vendors (developers) who deliver custom solutions to cover their own business needs.

While the Synapse platform’s main goal is to enable self-service data analysis. Users can directly connect to the raw data from the data lake, execute custom queries, see the data on a transactional level and even connect to the data from Excel or Power BI.

More dynamic data

Compared to the aggregated dashboards (built on the on-prem data warehouse), in the new Synapse-based data warehouse all the data is available on transactional level. This means data like: cart size (how many items are bought together), all transactions, transactional data on item level (which items are bought together, discounts, sales quantity, etc) all meta-and master data (shop details, like opening hours, plot size, geo coordinates etc.) Most of this data was previously NOT available in the pre-made dashboards built on the legacy on-prem system, and now it is available in the Synapse environment, in a more dynamic set-up and to a much larger audience.

Easier access, larger audience

With this new advanced analytics platform, business analysts can also access all the data and create their own reports, even from Excel. This setup also opens the door to create an additional data layer for third party companies (like vendors who are selling their -typically beverage- products in these shops), which can even be sold as a service, to create an additional stream of revenue.

Scalability and reduced infrastructure costs

Another huge advantage is that the new platform allows our client to dynamically scale compute resources up or down depending on their needs. This means a significantly better solution in terms of cost effectiveness.

The post Case Study: Advanced Analytics on top of a legacy on-prem DWH appeared first on Abylon.

What clients say about Rapid Analytics?

Zoltán Zicherman — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 17:29:58 +0000

Interview: What our clients say about our DWH Automation tool

A few weeks ago we successfully completed a data warehouse project for Dashboard Solutions using our Data Warehouse Automation Solution – Abylon Rapid Analytics. In relation to this, we had a quick interview about with senior BI Architect Zoltán Nyircsák to get a quick feedback from the clients’ side.

Abylon: Thank you for taking the time for this quick interview. First of all, for what tasks do you use Abylon Rapid Analytics?

Zoltán Nyircsák: It is important to mention that we basically did not buy a technology or a component, but a solution. We chose Abylon and their data warehousing solution because the technology they used promised a quick rollout (and they kept that promise). But nonetheless, it was paramount that the experts were truly experts from both business and technology perspective. In fact, on the customer side we don’t even really need to understand what ARA (editor’s note: ARA stands for Abylon Rapid Analytics) does, it’s enough to articulate the business problem and then enjoy the benefits.

Abylon: How and to what extent does Abylon Rapid Analytics simplify your work?

Zoltán Nyircsák: Since the technological solution and its maintenance and development are not on the customer’s side, so it’s not easy to answer this question. However, we do enjoy the benefits from the business side. Eg: rapid development of data markets.

Abylon: How responsive is the solution (or Abylon?) How fast can it track changes?

Zoltán Nyircsák: The responsiveness is good. There were several source system changes that were easily handled by the solution. For example, there have been several overnight transitions to develop a new source system. Because we work with source systems that are in use, they are constantly changing, evolving, getting new features. So it was important for us that the BI solution we were building could handle this (with the help of Abylon experts, of course.)

Abylon: How flexible is the system?

Zoltán Nyircsák: So far, we have found a solution for everything together. Here again, I would like to point out that the technology used is “hidden” from us. This division of responsibilities between us and your experts was agreed prior to the project. Our part is to formulate the request, whether it’s some specific data, analysis, or business problem, and you give us the solution.

Abylon: How complicated do you find managing such a system?

Zoltán Nyircsák: This is also part of the service, so we don’t have to deal with it. However, the data warehouse and data market based on the solution, and the Power BI service, was an excellent choice. We are able to respond quickly to new business needs, facilitating the accurate, timely and reliable delivery of not only data but also information.

Abylon: What do you think, how much time did the use of Rapid Analytics saved you during your data warehouse building project?

Zoltán Nyircsák: Without it, it would’ve been an order of magnitude (I really mean the 10 times multiplier) more time and money to develop such a solution and then to adopt and react to all the changes. The development time has been largely reallocated and instead of spending time on manually creating the obligatory things, we were able to spend more time on the essential things and put more energy into the construction of the data market.

Abylon: Finally, what would be the feature that would make Abylon Rapid Analytics even more valuable to you?

Zoltán Nyircsák: Right now, we don’t really need anything else, but if I think about the future, maybe a built-in report on the operation of Abylon Rapid Analytics, the data loads and performance would be good.

If you are interested in our DWH Automation solution, head to the dedicated product page or contact us and we’ll be happy to answer your questions or arrange an online presentation

The post What clients say about Rapid Analytics? appeared first on Abylon.

Case Study: Go-live for video HR solution based on VideoCC

Zoltán Zicherman — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 21:25:20 +0000

We are really proud to announce that recently one of our dear clients – the MVM Group (a predominant player of the Hungarian energy system) launched their new video-based HR system. Why are we so delighted? Because Abylon VideoCC – our video call center platform – is at the core of this system.

Benefits of a video-based HR solution

With the new video-based solution, MVM HR can securely assist their all of their employees no matter where they are (at the office, at remote locations or at home) or what device they are using (company or personal computer, laptop, or mobile device) as long as the device has internet connection and a working webcam.

As a result, even the blue-collar employees who typically do not work in the office and do not have company computers or accounts can contact MVM HR using their own devices, while still ensuring all the necessary authentication requirements (using both: the built-in two factor authentication and the visual video-authentication).

Previously these employees from all over Hungary needed to travel to the central offices to deal with any HR related issues. Now they can do it in a matter of minutes from anywhere.

Moreover, the new solution – similarly to a traditional call center – receives all the video calls and then automatically distributes them to the available HR colleague, ensuring quick and effective processing. This approach will not only modernize and speed up HR processes and align the solution to the growing number of remote workers, but will also present a viable, risk-free option in case of a situation like the corona virus pandemic.

About VideoCC – our video call center platform

The usage of VideoCC for HR purposes shows how flexible the platform is. Due to its modular build, web-based approach, and our rapid implementation framework it can be customized to fit multiple use-case scenarios. In a matter of weeks, you can have your own video-based customer call center, video-based HR platform, video bank or telemedicine solutions. For more information on VideoCC click on the button below.

The post Case Study: Go-live for video HR solution based on VideoCC appeared first on Abylon.