Encouraging confidence in data-driven intelligence
Providing world-class onboard retail and catering experiences within the airline industry, Versilia Solutions deliver a wide range of services. From integrating digital solutions to enhancing and managing supply chains, their end-to-end methodology aims to optimise cost, limit shrinkage, offer creative crew training, and maximise profits.
Always looking for innovations to strengthen their services and empower their customers, Versilia approached DataShapa with a view to increase the value, security, and efficiency of their data-driven intelligence.
“Our mentality was that while we’re young and agile, let’s implement the right infrastructure as early as possible. It was all about finding the right partnership to get this in place.”
With a strong partnership forged, we have created and streamlined reporting capabilities for Versilia. More than three years after our original introduction, we’re still developing new and exciting projects.
What we have achieved is a really robust and stable data model that gives us the ability to provide retail insights across all of our customers.
Trent Powell, Project and Product Manager
Understanding the challenges and initial steps
“For each customer, there might be three or four instances of data, and so creating a universal platform was challenging.”
Versilia was starting to realise the full potential of their data. Alongside this, they were seeking to infuse their culture with innovative processes and had begun to understand the many advantages that Power BI and other Business Intelligence tools could bring to their services.
Enhancing the insights for both their clients and streamlining operations, optimised Business Intelligence tools enabled Versilia to drive greater revenue than ever before for their customers. However, working with a wide range of data sources and client-specific structures, they wanted to ensure their reports and architecture included all datasets and integrated all sources correctly.
This would allow them to avoid introducing unwanted biases, and guarantee that their reports and architecture were built on solid foundations for a future-proofed approach.
After carefully examining Versilia’s architecture, data sources, and current processes, we created a Data Warehouse with a single source of truth that accompanied all data used across the business and reports.
With this single source of truth in play, users were able to interact with reports while being secure in the knowledge that results could be trusted. This is critical when reports are investigating vital elements like profit/loss margins and total spend to date.
Any variation in reports not only pushes users away due to a lack of trust, but also increases the chances of users adopting error-prone and lengthy manual processes instead.
With reports made interactive and accessible, it also empowered internal teams and customers to get under their data’s hood, examining metrics in more detail to understand hidden trends and areas for efficiency without the fear that results may vary over time.
“There’s been a cultural evolution alongside that of our infrastructure. If the first thing your team is saying when they see a result is ‘why?’, that’s a more important culture and one that we’re eager to instil. If an airline is not particularly geared towards a commercial retail mindset, then fast, easy, and visual data is the easiest way to gain their trust and buy-in.”
A trusted ongoing partnership
“What really warms me about our partnership with DataShapa is that, when I’ve asked for some training in a particular area, they’ve equipped us with the necessary tools without an issue. It represents our great partnership: they’re not holding the keys to their chest at all and are always willing to help us learn.”
Just as streamlined reports empower teams to understand and examine data, our work in sharing skillsets and training materials allowed the Versilia team to harness their architecture and data for greater independence, self-sufficiency, and confidence in BI processes.
Throughout our multi-year partnership with Versilia, one of the core concepts we’ve operated on, and continue to pride ourselves on, is the focus on not just implementing projects on-demand to enhance data intelligence, but imparting our knowledge through collaborative working, skill-sharing, and training material.
From understanding the intricacies of different data sources and how to integrate them within the same report to building bespoke reporting capabilities, this knowledge sharing is emblematic of the wider DataShapa mission that aims to help businesses realise, and harness, their data’s full potential.
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Focusing on future innovations
As Versilia look to the future of these reporting capabilities, we’re working to expand the insights we provided to include information on financial data alongside that of stock, inventory, and more to provide a complete overview for customers.
What’s more, by combining historical data with streaming data, we aim to equip our customers with reports that can provide a more complete picture to better inform strategic decisions – a significant challenge considering the capabilities of onboard networks.
A value-led approach we are proud of
“In Power BI we’ve been able to automate a wide range of analysis processes. For us, from a retail perspective, this has been extremely meaningful and valuable. Being able to benchmark ourselves against milestones is great for visibility and distilling performance down, as well as being infinitely quicker.”
We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved in partnership with Versilia. From ensuring that varied and complex data sources interacting with Power BI are reliable and secure from client to client, to maintaining a thorough understanding of their future goals, we have been able to add continuous value and work on an exciting range of projects.
What’s more, with a collaborative focus on team training and retained engagement, we continue to empower the Versilia team to better utilise and optimise their current processes. We look forward to seeing what the future of our involvement holds.
Facing a wide range of challenges native to the airline industry, as well as the complications generated by the recent pandemic, our partnership with Versilia continues to enable an advanced, data-driven approach that provides industry-leading services.
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