Applied Technical Services, Inc. (ATS) is a premier provider of high-quality consulting engineering, testing, and inspection services across the globe.
Introduction
When delivering on hundreds of jobs each month, having access to operational data is paramount to success. Applied Technical Services (ATS) needed a new solution for providing business insights to their department managers, so they turned to Abel Solutions to maximize their investment in the cloud.
A Stressed System
As a provider of non-destructive testing across 29 locations in the United States, ATS had mountains of data and a miserable time making any use of it. ATS department managers needed data for their decision-making processes but reports had to be manually generated by ATS’ IT department.
CHALLENGE
Design and develop a secure cloud-based reporting solution providing access to multiple data sources with self-service options for client department managers and executives.
SOLUTION
Deploy Microsoft 365 solution leveraging Power BI to grant secured access to operation data while providing users with necessary features to be self-sufficient.
RESULT
Department Manager and Executives have near real-time access to operations data – that they can manipulate and massage via Power BI – to make informed decisions. Client IT can focus on IT priorities indeed of producing ad hoc reports.
Maximizing The Cloud
Leveraging ATS’ existing Microsoft 365 environment and Power BI, Abel Solutions designed a “single source” solution to satisfy all departments’ reporting requirements. Microsoft 365 cloud storage capabilities, as well as its ability to configure groups of authenticated users and manage access to data based on their membership, further cemented its usefulness as a basis for their new system. ATS also needed us to deliver flexibility in their reporting operations going forward — while their primary concern was freeing up the IT department, a major change like this presented an opportunity to improve the quality of their reporting as well as their speed.
Return on Their Investment
Overall, Abel Solutions was able to modernize the client’s reporting processes with a little help from Power BI. This powerful data visualization tool served as a foundation upon which we built a secure and scalable solution that may one day encompass a range of metrics, including employee utilization rates, laboratory statistics, and any other variety of data applicable to their business model. ATS is now maximizing their investment in the cloud.