Quantifiable cost savings
Andrew can already report measurable cost savings from the project: “We’ll be turning off several software subscription services in the coming weeks and months – services that are now integrated within Fabric. We estimate this will save the business around £20,000 each year,” he remarks. “The next step is to be able to shine a light on individual business performance and provide support where needed to hit targets. That’s when we’ll see the real ROI.”
Andrew also notes that the project had a one-time upfront expense to cover the build. But after that, The Clear Group only pays for the analytics functionality when it’s used. “That’s particularly valuable to us because we could reasonably have a six-month gap between acquisitions,” Andrew explains. “It means we can scale our use, and our associated costs, directly in line with our acquisition strategy. Plus, of course, we also save money because we don’t need to physically maintain the IT infrastructure that housed our data warehouse.”
A single source of truth
Before rolling out Fabric, Andrew recalls that the business had relied on two data sources and dashboards to deliver company metrics: “People were spending more time trying to understand the differences between the two sources, rather than analysing the actual underlying business performance. Combining those two dashboards in Fabric gives us a single source of truth on a single pane of glass. It’s far more powerful, efficient and accurate. It’s also given us more insight into where to pivot operations and provide more focus. ”
Fabric provides us with new opportunities to interrogate the data. Importantly, it also presents and visualises information in an easy-to-understand way. In the longer term, thanks to Node4’s help and support, we’ll be able to build out more analytics tools and set smart, measurable KPIs. Having accurate and timely data and reports readily available makes a real difference. It creates the potential for more meaningful and productive conversations about targets and progress.”
Andrew McNaught, Head of Data and MI at The Clear Group
Compliance and data security
Andrew also notes the original system carried inherent data security risks, but that these have been addressed with the new analytics platform: “On joining the company – and before we started this project – I discovered that the data warehouse servers were out of warranty. I was also concerned about complying with data privacy and protection regulations when that data was siloed across multiple locations and sources. With Microsoft Fabric, all our data is in one place, which makes compliance with GDPR, DORA, and insurance industry-specific data protection legislation a lot easier,” he says. “Plus, with Node4’s guidance, we can take full advantage of the solution’s data encryption, data governance, advanced access control, and user permission functionality.”
Solid data foundations for AI integration
Looking to the future, once all the data has been migrated to Fabric, Andrew believes the company will be in a strong position to investigate AI-driven data analytics use cases – something he could not previously consider as the legacy on-premises solution had limited scope for such integrations: “Once the data hygiene work is completed, we’ll have an accurate, reliable picture of how the entire business is performing at any given time. We can then start to think about training AI and machine learning models to do some fascinating and innovative analysis. But we must have those strong data foundations in place first, so this is very much a longer-term goal.”
