Data Management: Essential, Not Optional

In today’s data-driven world, effective data management isn’t just a luxury—it’s a necessity. Organizations across the UK have realized that without a solid data management strategy, they risk inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and potential compliance issues. Let’s delve into some real-world case studies that showcase the transformative power of robust data management.

Austability’s Strategic Reporting Overhaul

Austability, a defense and government contracting firm, faced challenges in accessing and utilizing financial and operational data across its international subsidiaries. Despite having the data, it was inconsistent and difficult to access, leaving leadership without the insights needed for informed decision-making.

To address this, Austability partnered with ADW Data Solutions to design and implement a suite of Power BI dashboards. These dashboards provided senior stakeholders with visibility over core metrics, enabling both high-level and detailed analyses across global business units. The result? A strategic reporting layer that enhanced performance management and decision-making processes.

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Data2Action’s Impact on Education

The Trust, overseeing a network of primary and secondary schools, struggled with gaining insights into pupil attendance, academic performance, and teacher assessments. Data was hard to access and compare, leaving leadership without a clear view of trends and issues across schools.

Collaborating with Data2Action, the Trust developed a suite of Power BI dashboards tailored for day-to-day operations and strategic oversight. These dashboards covered everything from attendance to academic performance, providing both summary and detailed views for leadership and school staff. The outcome was a clear, consistent view that enabled faster, data-driven decisions around interventions, resource allocation, and performance planning.

Avove UK’s Data Platform Modernization

Avove, a utilities and infrastructure company, grappled with manual reporting processes and inconsistent, unstructured data sources. The lack of a scalable system hindered their ability to onboard future clients and integrate new systems.

Engaging with ADW Data Solutions, Avove undertook a comprehensive modernization of their data environment. The project involved designing and building an Azure-based data platform using Azure Data Factory, Data Lake, and Azure SQL Database. Implementing data quality checks and designing the system with governance and future expansion in mind, Avove now boasts a clean, consistent, and scalable data platform that supports business reporting and client onboarding, positioning them for future growth.

Rebound Electronics’ Sales Performance Boost

Operating across 22 countries, Rebound Electronics lacked centralized reporting and a consistent view of sales performance, customer behavior, and quote conversion. Data was siloed, manually processed, and difficult to trust, leaving decision-makers without reliable insights.

As their Data Manager, the task was to develop and implement a new data strategy from the ground up. This involved provisioning a Snowflake environment, designing the end-to-end data model and data marts, building robust data pipelines using Snowflake and dbt, and overseeing governance and data quality. The result was a clear, actionable view of their pipeline, helping the sales team prioritize follow-ups, manage quotes more effectively, and strengthen customer relationships. Within the first month of go-live, quote conversion increased by 30%, directly tied to improved responsiveness and workload management.

PureGym’s Facilities Management Transformation

PureGym’s Facilities Management (FM) team lacked a consistent way of tracking costs, performance, or contractor efficiency across their UK-wide network of gyms. Data was locked in ERP systems and XML files, with most analysis done manually in Excel, leading to inefficiencies and budget overruns.

Joining as FM Data Insights Manager, the approach was to overhaul their data strategy. This involved building a new Azure-based data warehouse from scratch, writing Python scripts to extract and reformat ERP data delivered in raw XML, creating automated data flows, and integrating this with Power BI to produce a complete reporting environment for FM operations. The impact was tangible: reversing a £150K overspend to a £100K underspend—a £250K swing—and improving supplier KPIs by 80%. This transformation not only enhanced operational efficiency but also led to a more data-driven approach to facilities management.

British Car Auctions’ Data-Driven Efficiency

The logistics branch of British Car Auctions (BCA) faced challenges with team morale and efficiency after company-wide policy changes. Reporting was heavily reliant on Excel, and data teams were siloed with limited visibility into real-time operations. Clients lacked access to up-to-date KPIs, and account managers were wasting hours each week on manual updates.

Rebuilding and leading the data team in logistics, the strategy was to design and implement an internal Power BI reporting environment that provided near real-time visibility into operational metrics. Additionally, developing an external QlikView dashboard for clients to track progress and KPIs directly dramatically reduced the load on account managers. The internal dashboards allowed planners to resolve issues before they escalated, improving delivery accuracy and reducing costs. Externally, clients had 24/7 access to accurate updates, improving transparency and trust. BCA’s data maturity improved significantly, and the dashboards became embedded in both internal workflows and client relationships.

Youth Justice Board’s Document Management Overhaul

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) for England and Wales needed to streamline its documentation processes. They required an Electronic Document and Record Management system to digitize and manage their documents more efficiently.

Clarity Tech implemented a cloud-based Office 365/SharePoint solution, including customization, cloud hosting, and post-implementation support. The project also involved developing Power BI reporting dashboards. Post-implementation, the YJB experienced an 85% improvement in performance, a 90% improvement in data quality, and automated 90% of document management processes, leading to significant operational efficiencies.

Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s Digital Transformation

Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust required a range of Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Data Warehouse development and support services. This included supporting a major upgrade to their Patient Administration System and managing the implementation and post-live support of a major operational reporting workstream.

Clarity Tech conducted on-site workshops with key stakeholders and initiated a project to deliver a suite of mission-critical operational reports. Further solutions included a SharePoint product suite for comprehensive document management, BI, Analytics, and Data Warehousing, and a Mortality Review Product. These solutions led to a 90% performance improvement, a 90% data quality improvement, an 80% improvement in system integration, and significant improvements in cost efficiency and productivity.

Royal Surrey County Hospital’s KPI Reporting Enhancement

Royal Surrey County Hospital needed a major upgrade to their existing patient information/KPI system. Clarity Tech ran an 8-week mobilisation and discovery exercise working directly with senior stakeholders at the NHS Trust.

Following this, a detailed plan was created to manage all aspects of the upgrade process. Tasks included cleansing, archiving, and migration of data from existing systems to the new data warehouse and reporting system, completion of hierarchy dimension data modelling, automated and manual data mapping of cleansed data to the new data-driven QlikView Reporting System, and integration of technologies to improve data quality and process efficiency. The outcome was an 85% data quality improvement, with 95% of reporting tasks being automated, resulting in overall performance improvements of 80% and an average reduction in reporting workload of 75%.

These case studies underscore a critical point: effective data management isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have. Organizations that invest in robust data management strategies not only enhance operational efficiency but also position themselves for sustainable growth and success in an increasingly data-centric world.