Sonepar inspires its employees with Power BI introduction

Photo: ©sonepar

In today's data-driven business world, data-driven decision making is crucial for global organisations. Sonepar Deutschland GmbH recognises the relevance of this approach and relies on Microsoft Power BI as an effective reporting and analysis tool. As a long-standing partner of Sonepar, noventum consulting already successfully helped to redesign and consolidate the company's central data warehouse in 2018. We have now taken the next step in our collaboration: the implementation of Power BI to improve reporting and analyses.

Sonepar Deutschland GmbH is part of the globally active Sonepar Group and one of the leading companies for electrical installation materials with a turnover of more than 3 billion euros in 2022 and more than 5,000 employees at around 200 locations in Germany. As a partner at eye level, Sonepar supports customers from trade, commerce and industry with customer-oriented solutions: high-quality products and systems paired with a comprehensive range of services.

Initial situation:

Sonepar in Germany was facing a number of challenges in the area of reporting. The existing reporting options were static, slow and found little acceptance in the specialist departments. In view of the requirements for new sales analyses, it was now time to find innovative solutions. In this context, the company decided to introduce a new front-end tool. Various factors played a role in the search for a suitable solution: a modern, attractive design, interactivity, report performance and loading times, mobile access and, above all, intuitive report creation and expansion. Partly due to the existing use of Microsoft Power BI in the Sonepar Group worldwide, it was decided to also use this tool at Sonepar in Germany.

Realisation:

noventum consulting actively supported Sonepar in Germany in the realisation of the new reporting platform. In close co-operation with Sonepar's IT department, training courses were held to build up the necessary know-how for the successful use of Power BI. The focus was on modelling a central dataset, setting up the Power BI service, creating key figures and configuring an incremental loading process. The experts from noventum consulting and Sonepars IT worked closely with the specialist departments to support them in learning the new tool and to enable them to create Power BI reports independently.

Result:

Thanks to the successful implementation of Power BI, Sonepar in Germany was able to establish a new form of collaboration and communication between IT and the specialist departments. The IT department now acts as an enabler for the specialist departments and actively supports them in realising their requirements. The company has developed the outdated, static reporting system into a modern, flexible front end with Power BI. The new reporting environment offers appealing visualisations and enables interactive reports and dashboards that meet both the requirements of the departments and the expectations of the end users.

By implementing Power BI, Sonepar in Germany has made significant progress in terms of reporting and analyses. The company now has a powerful tool that enables employees to analyse data quickly and easily and make informed decisions. Just 1.5 years after the initial rollout, over 800 satisfied users are already utilising the modern front-end tool.

Sonepar's internal IT service provider prioritises the end users. The partnership with noventum consulting ensured a smooth implementation process. The interactive reports and analyses based on the central dataset are highly performant and still enable fine-grained evaluations and detailed insights down to document level.

The successful collaboration between Sonepar in Germany and noventum consulting with the implementation of Power BI as a modern front-end tool has led to Sonepar optimising its reporting functionalities and thus enabling even better data-driven decisions in the specialist departments. In future, further subject areas are to be implemented in Power BI and the current impressive number of over 800 users is set to grow even further.