Cross function PowerBI dashboards offer Patersons live business reporting

Who are Patersons?
Patersons Quarries Limited is a Glasgow-based, family-owned businesses and parent company to several other companies, including Patersons Waste Management, Patersons of Greenoakhill Limited, Gartsherrie Engineering Limited, Palmaris Services Limited, amongst others. The Group’s companies are involved in quarrying, waste management, plant hire, facilities management and general engineering.
What was the objective?
Given the amount of crossover between the different group companies, there are clear advantages to be gained from cross-business management information reporting.
Patersons’ management team wanted to be able to examine data from different business arms and provide up-to-date reporting of key commercial metrics drawing on numerous data sources.
As well as giving group management a holistic overview of all group activities, the reporting would also allow senior managers in each company the chance to analyse the data in more detail.
What was the solution?
Patersons had already set up their own reporting process but were aware that they weren’t using the tools to their fullest. They went out to look for an Analytics Consultancy that could work with them on a flexible basis, to mentor their team and to make the most of their reporting potential. Lorna Gall, Director at Patersons, came across DeeperThanBlue via the Microsoft Partner Network and reached out to us to provide the service they needed.
The principal focus of our support is on the development and maintenance of Patersons’ Microsoft Power BI installation. We extracted data from the group companies, integrated it into MS PowerBI and presented it on a user-friendly dashboard and series of reports.
The DeeperThanBlue team worked on the data modelling and data analysis expression (DAX) language development to ensure the correct data was presented and created dashboard frameworks. Patersons took these dashboards and added the final polish, establishing the layout that worked best for them and applying their branding to help with buy-in from in-house users.
Beyond the MS PowerBI mentoring and support, additional time was spent providing general advice and data support across all parts of the business. This additional work has included data integration and modelling, dashboard development and SQL consulting.
What was the outcome?
The power of the analytics dashboards has been clearly demonstrated, with all the major business functions able to interrogate their data in real-time. This has helped the company get a clear commercial view of business activities, including sales performance, profitability, top customers, product ranges and seasonal effects.
The live dashboards have also been instrumental in helping Patersons move away from a reliance on spreadsheets, giving them a more dynamic ERP system.
Moreover, the flexibility of the working arrangement works well for both Patersons and DeeperThanBlue, as Patersons call off their time as and when they need it and for DeeperThanBlue, the support work dovetails nicely with larger project work.

© Patersons Quarries
Testimonial

© Patersons Quarries
“It’s been incredibly beneficial to have an external perspective on our data usage,” commented Lorna. “Simon, our main contact at DeeperThanBlue, has taken a holistic view of our data and processes and implemented several changes that have had a significant impact on the business.
“We are on a journey with our business analytics with further changes on the horizon. Having Simon’s experience available alleviates any concerns our data managers have about the changes.
“When we began our journey, we knew we had a lot of complicated data to integrate, but DeeperThanBlue’s approach was straightforward, pragmatic, and practical, and gave us the confidence to take the development further.
“Beyond the main data insights work, we’ve been able to call on DeeperThanBlue’s expertise in data management and analytics to help us with ad hoc requests.”
Lorna adds, “I’ve learnt an awful lot about our data and the functionality of PowerBI, and we now have a much better view of our business intelligence than we would have without the input of Simon and the rest of the DeeperThanBlue team.”