Client background

The organization is a not-for-profit that serves as the hub for a network of more than 700 partner agencies and programs in the Chicagoland area, providing food and other essential resources to individuals and families in need. The organization has been working to alleviate hunger and food insecurity in the community for over 40 years.

The business challenge

The organization was struggling to utilize data across their many internal systems to help them make informed decisions. Challenges included difficulties in accessing and combining data from multiple sources, inefficient and time-consuming report generation and relying on manual processes that took up staff time that could be better spent analyzing data, making decisions and implementing actions based on insights.

Strategy and solution

To address the challenges faced by the organization, Baker Tilly Digital worked closely with organizational leaders to understand the business needs of the platform. The project aim was to develop a first-class solution that was also useful and maintainable to the organization. They implemented a comprehensive data warehouse solution using Microsoft Azure tools, including Azure Data Lake, Azure SQL Databases, Azure Data Factory and Power BI.

The solution was designed specifically for the not-for-profit's needs and capabilities, including:

• A scalable solution to accommodate an array of data sources by leveraging Azure Data Lakes and Data Vault modeling methodology, keeping the platform future-proofed to system changes
• A star schema dimensional data mart for ease of reporting and seamless integration with business intelligence (BI) tools
• An extract, transform, load (ETL) logging framework and automated data quality tests for data integrity and monitoring, ensuring data was reliable and trustworthy
• Power BI reports, workspaces and applications data access by users across the organization
• Development using an Agile project management approach for increased efficiency and flexibility

The implementation of the data analytics platform has expanded the impact the organization can make in its community by enabling and empowering organizational leaders to make data informed decisions. The new data warehouse resource is being leveraged by additional teams in the organization for other reporting use cases and workflows. Automated processes are being implemented to combine and present data of the organization’s operations.

This foundational data solution has enabled the organization to leverage comprehensive reporting tools for operational decision making, saving time and resources previously used on manual processes. Overall, the data warehouse has provided the organization with the insights and tools necessary to make informed decisions and take impactful actions to combat food insecurity in their community.