Tullis Russell
Power BI and Azure Integration Delivering Real-Time Insights from Legacy COBOL Systems with Scalable, Cost-Effective Architecture
The Challenge:
- Legacy BI setup with COBOL ERP, Microsoft Excel, and Matillion causing inefficiencies
- Data for reporting only refreshed twice daily
- Required external help to configure new reports
- Data spread across many disparate sources
- BI software more costly than alternative solutions
Our Solution:
Replaced their legacy BI software with Power BI integration with Azure for this 200-year-old manufacturer of specialist paper and film coatings. Implemented Azure Serverless for scalable, cost-effective data ingestion connecting PowerBI to their COBOL-based platform for sales and inventory data.
Key Features and Benefits
- Power BI integration with Azure
- Near real-time data updates (every 15 minutes) vs twice daily previously
- Connection to legacy COBOL-based platform
- Finance team can view company progress in near real-time
- Azure Serverless architecture for data ingestion
- Pay-as-you-go serverless model with no baseline costs<
- Azure Synapse Analytics-on-Demand
- Microsoft handles all IT maintenance overhead
- Real-time sales and inventory data visualisation
- Created cost-effective, future-proof BI system
- Scalable, cost-effective data processing
- Flexible system that can easily grow to incorporate new data sources