September 8th
February 22nd
Customer name and individual details have been anonymized at the customer’s request.
A major player in the global mining and trading industry has transformed its complex reporting process using Zebra BI for Power BI. Despite a lean business intelligence (BI) team, the company can support reporting for all key departments around the globe, thanks to the powerful capabilities of Zebra BI.
By leveraging the advanced BI tool and adhering to International Business Communication Standards (IBCS), the company has streamlined its reporting process, enabling more efficient decision-making and clearer insights into complex business operations.
With operations across multiple regions and diverse business functions, the company struggled with fragmented and inconsistent reporting. Legacy systems worked in silos, making it difficult to consolidate data and create standardized reports, hindering cross-department collaboration and decision-making.
The organization’s complex structure, with multiple hierarchies and varying cost center depths, presented additional challenges. Legacy tools lacked the flexibility to handle these complexities, while manual processes for calculating variances and aligning data consumed valuable time.
We had multiple versions of the truth across departments, making it difficult to make informed decisions.
The need for real-time reporting, with consistent standards across geographies and business units, became even more urgent as the company grew. The previous system was simply not equipped to handle the scale of data or the speed of decision-making required to stay competitive in a fast-moving global market.
The reporting process was slow, and we lacked the agility to respond quickly to changing market conditions. The time spent formatting and validating reports could have been better used for analysis.
This global enterprise’s BI journey began with an early adoption of Power BI, where the need for a more robust visualization tool led them to Zebra BI. The introduction of it was a critical turning point as it provided the opportunity to get actionable insights adhering to global standards.
Zebra BI’s tools were seamlessly integrated into the Power BI platform, empowering users to deliver reports that comply with reporting best practices automatically. From its early days of use, Zebra BI became a central piece of the company’s BI infrastructure, simplifying report creation and automating as much of the process as possible to free up time for strategic decision-making.
We were early adopters, and Zebra BI quickly became an essential part of our BI strategy. It’s been with us since the beginning, and its evolution over the years has been a key factor in helping us scale our reporting effectively.
Adopting Zebra BI has had a profound impact on the way the company approaches reporting, as it ensures out-of-the-box compliance with the International Business Communication Standards (IBCS).
The company’s previous CEO, a strong advocate of IBCS, recognized that Zebra BI’s built-in adherence to the standards would be key to bringing clarity and structure to their reports.
The IBCS standard was a priority for us, and Zebra BI’s ability to implement it by default was crucial. This saved us a lot of effort and ensured consistency across all levels of the organization.
The IBCS compliance prevents the display of numbers in isolation, ensuring that all data is placed in context. This was particularly valuable for the company, which deals with a vast array of financial and operational data that must be interpreted in relation to multiple drivers.
This approach helps us tell the full story behind the numbers, making our reports more actionable.
Another standout feature of Zebra BI is its ability to handle unbalanced hierarchies within the company’s reporting structure. The company’s operations span numerous regions and departments, with cost centers varying widely in depth, from just a few levels to over ten. Zebra BI’s flexibility allows for efficient reporting on all these different structures, without the need to impose a one-size-fits-all hierarchy.
Our cost center structures are complex; some are very deep, while others are relatively flat. Zebra BI handles this well, allowing us to display data appropriately for each level without forcing uniformity. It’s one of the reasons why Zebra BI has been so valuable in our reporting.
Additionally, Zebra BI’s ability to break down costs by different drivers has helped the company gain a deeper understanding of the factors affecting their performance. By linking costs to various operational components such as labor, maintenance, and procurement, the company can pinpoint the exact reasons for discrepancies and inefficiencies.
Zebra BI’s breakdown of costs by driver has been transformative. It allows us to see exactly why we’re not hitting targets, whether it’s maintenance costs, labor, or material procurement, and address the root causes more effectively.
This breakdown extends to predictive maintenance, where the company uses Zebra BI to highlight areas where equipment issues may arise based on historical performance and targets. This has enabled proactive decision-making to avoid costly downtime and ensure smooth operations.
The option to automatically calculate differences has also saved the company significant time. Instead of manually calculating variances and deviations, the tool does this automatically, providing users with immediate insights into performance gaps. This has been especially useful in financial reports where the team can now see real-time variances, whether comparing actual vs. budget, or previous vs. current periods.
Despite being a global enterprise, the company’s BI team is relatively lean. Comprising approximately a dozen people across various functions of business intelligence, the team could have been overwhelmed by the scale of the company’s reporting needs. However, Zebra BI’s advanced features and ease of integration have empowered the team to manage and support reporting for multiple key departments around the world.
As the company continues to grow and expand, the BI team’s ability to meet the increasing demands of reporting has been a direct result of Zebra BI’s efficiency.
Our BI team is small, but thanks to modern tools like Zebra BI, we can support reporting needs across a global organization. It’s all about working smarter, not harder. With Zebra BI, we can accomplish a lot with fewer resources.
As the company moves forward, there are plans to roll out Zebra BI across even more regions and business functions. However, the company remains committed to ensuring that its reporting models remain simple and easy to understand, especially for end-users. While advanced BI tools are essential for internal teams, the company recognizes the importance of democratizing information for all employees without overwhelming them with overly complex models.
As we expand Zebra BI’s use across geographies, our focus will always be on keeping things simple for the end-users. We want to avoid overcomplicating models so that people can easily interpret the data. It’s an uphill battle, but we’re committed to making sure everyone can access the insights they need.
This focus on simplicity will continue to guide their BI strategy as they scale the solution to other regions, ensuring that the tool remains intuitive and valuable for a diverse range of users.
With a proven track record of experience using Zebra BI, the company has transformed its approach to global reporting. From financial reports to operational insights, Zebra BI has helped the company:
With Zebra BI’s continued support, the company is not only meeting today’s reporting challenges but also future-proofing their BI infrastructure to handle even greater complexity as they expand into new regions and sectors
Zebra BI has been a trusted partner for us from the very beginning. Its evolution has matched our needs as we’ve grown, and we continue to see more value as we expand its use across the company. We’re excited about what the future holds with Zebra BI.
Bring clarity and consistency to every report
