Financial Data Visualization for Smarter Decision-Making

Imagine having the power to monitor your entire organization’s performance and make informed decisions about future budgets – all from a single, intuitive dashboard.

For a massive million-dollar educational institution that has to deal with cash flow among students, staff, vendors, operational units, and more, real-time data streaming is everything. These intuitive financial dashboards do not only benefit the decision-makers or leadership team, but they also help the staff, vendors, and operational units to manage their expenses and clear off pending payments.

In the current era of online education and digital payment systems, the demand for real-time financial data accessibility across diverse communities has become imperative in this hybrid work culture. Achieving a seamless flow of financial data between applications and transforming it into meaningful insights is crucial across all industries. However, the process of extracting, cleansing, transforming, integrating, and visualizing these scattered financial data points into a unified and intuitive dashboard is easier said than done.

The client faced significant challenges due to the absence of a unified financial dashboard. These challenges included financial losses, inaccurate reports, misleading cashflows, and discrepancies in calculations and audits. Therefore, the client partnered with zeb to establish a comprehensive 360-degree financial dashboard, catering to the diverse needs of their community audience. This solution aimed to streamline financial datasets and provide a holistic view for better decision-making and improved financial management.

Why our client aspired to implement real-time streaming using Azure Databricks?

The client, with a vast and diverse community, faced challenges in achieving appropriate information accessibility tailored to individual profiles. Additionally, they encountered difficulties in implementing data democratization and security policies for financial datasets, considering the organizational hierarchy.

The automation of financial report generation and distribution became a critical requirement.

To address these needs, the client sought a modern, scalable, feature-rich, security-focused, and unified cloud data warehouse platform capable of managing the complete data lifecycle of their educational institution. Initiating the engagement, we proposed digital transformation and data analytics solutions utilizing Databricks, considering their existing IT infrastructure.

We modernized their legacy systems to Databricks, Azure SQL, Azure Data Factory, and Power BI. Our engagement includes:

SQL Server to Azure SQL migration
SSIS to Azure Data Factory migration
Databricks implementation
Power BI Data visualization
Master data pipeline with DevOps practices

One of the highlights of our Databricks implementation was the delivery of reusable and parametrized notebook templates, enabling the creation of new workflows to address future needs. We automated report generation and distribution processes using top-notch DevOps practices, relieving the client of repetitive tasks in daily financial report generation. As a result, decision-makers gained the ability to efficiently oversee cash flow and financial operations of the institution through a centralized Power BI dashboard. The streamlined DevOps pipelines effectively managed the entire data lifecycle, including extraction, cleansing, transformation, and visualization.

Here’s what we delivered as a Databricks implementation solution to our client:

Modernized their legacy SQL Server warehouse to Azure Synapse Analytics
Migrated the legacy ETL pipelines to Azure Databricks notebooks
Managed the complete data engineering lifecycle (Extract, transform, load, and visualize) using Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL, Databricks, and Power BI in a master data pipeline
Built a custom financial dataset that retrieves payroll, revenue, fee structure, full-time equivalent, contract, and non-contract expenses across the branches of the institution
Developed a 360-degree financial dashboard that showcases metrics such as revenue against each school, classroom, contracted, and non-contracted students
Automated report generation and sharing jobs. As best practice, we notified the IT team and specific stakeholders of job failure

Streamlining Financial Data for Education Client using Databricks

Top use cases with our Databricks implementation solution for the community

The institution recognized immense benefits in terms of budget & expense planning, decision-making, and digital transformation with our data strategy.

Intuitive & unified financial dashboard

Our team of data scientists successfully designed and developed a streamlined and intuitive unified financial dashboard. Prior to commencing the engagement, we brainstormed with the executive team to comprehend their requirements thoroughly. This collaborative effort enabled us to create a customized financial dashboard that presents data insights with precision and offers drill-through functionality.

Furthermore, we implemented row-level data security policies to ensure that financial information is filtered based on employee roles, safeguarding sensitive data and maintaining confidentiality.

Improved decision-making

To support the institution’s desire for a data-driven culture, our team orchestrated and developed a comprehensive list of financial reports tailored to each functional unit. Additionally, we provided user adoption training to empower users with self-service capabilities on the Power BI dashboard.

Digital transformation

Our team of data specialists successfully modernized the client’s legacy downstream applications by migrating them to a modern cloud data warehouse and implementing a robust data analytics solution. This holistic approach also ensured that their data architecture was transformed into a scalable, flexible, and sustainable framework capable of meeting future demands.

Precision in financial reports – Increase in revenue

The implementation of our unified financial dashboard allowed decision-makers and stakeholders in the institution to transition from rudimentary tasks to strategic and cognitive duties. This shift also enabled them to allocate time and resources towards organizing cultural events, planning both marketing and operational budgets, optimizing cashflows, scholarship funding, and fees for both contracted and non-contracted students.

With access to accurate and actionable financial data insights, the operational units were able to make informed decisions and contribute to enhanced revenue streams.

If you’re striving to build a robust data strategy for your organization to improve decision-making and get meaningful data stories, feel free to reach us.