1. Welcome! Power BI User Group (PUG)
Copenhagen

2. Eric Kierstead Chief Information Officer – Beavex Logistics Inc
Leveraging Power BI to Create a User Friendly, Customer Facing Dashboard for the Public Internet
Eric Kierstead
Chief Information Officer – Beavex Logistics Inc

3. Session Agenda Our Business Challenge
Technical Challenges with Power BI
Solutions to the Challenges
Demo

4. Who is Beavex Logistics?
Beavex is a technology driven provider of transportation and warehousing services throughout the United States, specializing in Final Mile Logistics
Nationwide network of 84 terminals and warehouses
Serving more than 850 customers
28 years in business
Over employees

5. What is Final Mile Logistics?
Final Mile Logistics is the movement of goods from a transportation hub to their final destination in the supply chain. The final destination is often a store or a home.

6. Some better known national companies in Final Mile Logistics:

7. Pro’s and Con’s of Beavex’s Current Position as a Challenger:
Very few national players
Even fewer that flex the way Beavex flexes to accommodate customer needs
Con’s:
The courier business is highly commoditized
Contracts typically awarded by Region or Metro area, so we generally compete against regional couriers
Several regional couriers exist that are as hungry and flexible as Beavex
Being a national player doesn’t provide much of a competitive advantage

8. How can we get the upper hand on the competition?
Technology!
Regional players don’t have the scale to create software the way national players can

9. Already had a Customer Portal – Wanted to Leverage it to the Max
Launched our customer portal “OneHub” in Sept 2016
Very good at providing real time status of today’s activities
“Me Too” portal – similar to what competitors were providing
Adding Analytics Dashboard displaying Beavex performance on customer’s account would be big differentiator
No known competitor offering both real-time control tower as well as KPI Dashboard in their portal
Would also be a powerful sales tool. Wanted Sales Team to begin the sales process with technology

10. Requirements for Analytics Dashboard
Must render the Dashboard with 1 click from within the Portal
Must refresh in under 6 seconds when changes made requiring db dip
Must support complex account structure, such that users only granted access to accounts for which they’re authorized
Must support ability to present customized dashboards to special customers
Must work on all mainstream browsers – Chrome, Edge, IE, Firefox
Create a Customer Experience Vision, Stick To It

11. Power BI chosen as the Platform
We’re a Microsoft Shop
Pricing model
Attractive UI – could implement dashboard so non-technical users would find it engaging
Appeared to support our functional UX Requirements (e.g. drilldown)
Modern IDE

12. Challenges Quickly Surfaced
Pushing account information to PBI
-- In multi-customer environment, no clear way to pass authorized account numbers
Rendering the correct Analytics Dashboard
-- Not obvious how to tell PBI which dashboard to display
Response times when needing new data
-- When accessing our on-premise data warehouse, response times were about 60 seconds
-- When accessing Azure-based data warehouse, response times were about 25 seconds
If there were straightforward, published ways to do these, we didn’t find them

13. Solving Challenge #1 – Pushing authorized accounts to Power BI
Discovered that the Filter object can hold an array of Account Numbers
After user is authenticated, put authorized account array into Filter object and pass it to PBI, along with our security token

14. Solving Challenge #2 – Telling Power BI what dashboard to display
Pass the ‘Dashboard GUID’ along with Account Numbers to PBI
Uniquely identifies which dashboard to render to the given user

15. Challenge #3 – Long Response times when needing new data
Discovered that response times from ‘Reports’ were very fast, e.g. < 3 Seconds
Constrained by the current limitation that Reports must be < 1 gigabyte
Would it be possible to squeeze all germane DW data into a Report ??!!??

16. Challenge #3 – Long Response times when needing new data
Eliminated all unneeded DW fields
Only included data back to Jan 1, 2016
Report size = 792 meg

17. Challenge #3 – Long Response times when needing new data
High level architecture:

18. Challenge #3 – Long Response times when needing new data
How did we automate the nightly process?
SSIS Scripts to extract data from our Transportation Management System
Powershell script to generate Report
Task Scheduler to invoke Powershell
Task Scheduler to push to Azure

19. Demo

20. Thank You! Travis Abell, Senior BI Architect
Beavex Inc
Eric Kierstead, Chief Information Officer
Beavex Inc

21. Meet Your Presenter
Use this slide to place your headshot, name, title, company, and any PUG volunteer positions (ex: Board Member, PUG Leader).

23. Demo

24. Thank you for Attending!
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