Electronic Technologies (ECT) (AW BI: BI platform)

2024: Implementation of BI-system AW BI for the concern "Radioelectronic Technologies" (KRET)

About Customer

Concern "Radioelectronic Technologies" (KRET) is the largest Russian holding in the field of radioelectronics. It includes about 70 research institutes, design bureaus and production enterprises. KRET develops and manufactures products for aviation, land and marine equipment, as well as solutions for transport, fuel and energy complex, medicine and mechanical engineering. The concern employs more than 40,000 employees.

Project objective

Unify the information space: create a single digital window of reporting in the direction of civilian products, which includes 16 enterprises with different IT landscapes. And also increase the culture of working with data.

Decision

The implementation of AW BI was carried out by the IT company "Business Solutions."

The business solution is an official partner and distributor of the Russian self-service BI-system AW BI. Key areas of expertise: comprehensive automation and digitalization of corporate customers, selection and implementation of IT products for the needs of the customer, design work using the Agile methodology; development and implementation of customized solutions on a microservice architecture to order, including highload and mobile applications, etc.

The team was tasked with automating data consolidation and simplifying the preparation of management reporting at the holding level.

Pre-implementation situation

• large holding;
• more than 16 enterprises;
• more than 5 different accounting systems used in enterprises;
• the concern in the process of unification of information systems, enterprises provided key indicators in the "manual" mode.

Each company has its own accounting system: 1C, SAP, Galactica, etc. Before the BI system was implemented, reports were prepared manually: employees uploaded data, combined it into Excel and sent to the management of the holding, where they were also manually processed. It took a long time and raised the risks of mistakes.

Implementation features

• implementation of BI-system "from scratch" at the holding level;
• Selection of AW BI thanks to a functionally developed ETL module
• The MVP scenario was implemented and launched in 1 week.

Taking into account the heterogeneity of the IT landscape of the holding enterprises and the need for a quick start of the project, it was decided to start the implementation of the BI-system with the collection of data in Excel format. At the same time, the collection process was partially automated: data was uploaded from local accounting systems and transmitted centrally without manual processing.

AW BI, a Russian self-service BI system with a developed built-in ETL, was chosen as the analytical platform. It is the presence of built-in tools for data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) that allowed you to deploy an on-premium solution in the cloud infrastructure and start downloading and visualizing data within the first week of the project.

"Dirty" data

Already at the start of the project, the team faced a typical problem - unstructured, "dirty" data. Excel forms that were sent by enterprises were assembled manually in arbitrary formats. It was impossible to process such information automatically.

To ensure that the data is correctly loaded into the BI system, it was decided to proceed to the unification phase:

• development of detailed instructions;
• standardization of templates;
• Send to all responsible employees.

The new requirements have increased the discipline of data collection and markedly improved its quality. Thus, the introduction of the BI system acted as a catalyst: enterprises began to realize the importance of standardization and automation, which directly affected the growth of digital maturity.

Your Data Collection Solutions

During the implementation process, it became clear that standard tools were not enough to efficiently collect and download data from enterprises, so our own data transfer infrastructure was developed.

As a single collection point, a web service was created in the form of "personal accounts" of enterprises. Through this interface, responsible employees could independently download Excel files.

To reduce the burden on BI analytics, the web service included a basic data check against the template: employees immediately received feedback if, for example, they specified the wrong period or sent incomplete data. This significantly accelerated the process and reduced the number of manual errors.

However, even with the web interface, there was a high load: 16 enterprises sent several files each month, and BI analytics had to manually check and clear the data. To solve this problem, an internal mini ETL system was implemented, which allows you to automate preliminary data validation and reduce the number of iterations between enterprises and the analyst.

The next step was to create your own highly pre-configured extractor from 1C. This is a software module built into the 1C system that automatically uploads data according to the specified rules without the need for the participation of the end user or 1C specialist.

Unlike universal extractors on the market, our extractor does not require setting up upload parameters: only business settings are available to the user, while the logic for obtaining data from registers and documents is already tightly fixed in the code. This solution was especially valuable for enterprises with limited IT resources or a lack of 1C specialists.

The automation of data collection at the 1C level has made it possible to increase the accuracy and regularity of incoming data. At the same time, a compromise scenario was provided for enterprises with increased security requirements: the extractor uploads data to an Excel file, which is then checked by responsible employees at the enterprise and only then transferred to the system.

Tailoring to user habits

At the stage of introducing and launching the first dashboards, the project team faced the need to take into account the established reporting processes. The management of the KRET enterprises was focused on the usual format - regular Excel or PDF reports, which were manually prepared and sent by responsible employees before the meetings. The format of analytics through the browser was initially perceived as inconvenient.

PDF distribution: automating a familiar scenario

To ensure maximum user loyalty and increase engagement, automatic generation and distribution of multi-page PDF reports was implemented. This approach made it possible to maintain the usual scenario of information consumption, while eliminating manual labor. Reports have become available from any device, including smartphones and tablets.

As the BI project developed and the digital maturity of users grew, the need for PDF began to decline. Managers increasingly began to refer to data directly in the BI system, especially at the time of meetings - this made it possible to quickly receive the most up-to-date information updated in real time.

Telegram boat

Nevertheless, the specifics of the work of managers in the holding required additional access channels: frequent business trips, field meetings, unstable connection to the Internet to - all this made it difficult to work with a full-fledged BI interface through a browser. As an alternative solution, it was developed - Telegramboat providing instant access to key reports and visualizations from AW BI directly in. messenger

The implementation of the solution included several technical nuances. The standard AW BI API does not support unloading dashboards while preserving custom filters. To circumvent this limitation, the project team deployed a virtual machine with a pre-installed Google Chrome browser and an automation driver. According to the specified script, the browser was launched, applied the specified filters, formed an image or PDF report, after which the result was automatically transmitted to the Telegram bot. This mechanism made it possible to maintain the flexibility of setting parameters and ensure the delivery of up-to-date information in the most convenient format.

Results

In a month, AW BI's BI system has evolved from an experimental pilot into a fully used tool from which the KRET leadership gets real benefit and which has become part of the day-to-day work.

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Фото: AW BI

One of the key achievements was the increased reliability and quality of the data collected. The transition from manual entry to automatic unloading significantly reduced the impact of the human factor and the variability of data, which made it possible to ensure uniformity and reliability of information for subsequent analysis.

In addition, AW BI has become the central information center of the concern: thanks to the integration of many disparate systems, the platform serves both to visualize key indicators through dashboards and widgets, and as the main source of operational, cleaned and consolidated data in Excel format for further processing and decision-making.

Within the framework of the project, careful adjustment of dashboards and reporting formats was carried out, fully meeting the requirements and wishes of the customer.