Accelerating the ability to onboard clients with a Power BI and Azure Data Factory

PowerBi Implementation

Challenge

ATA RiskStation is an industry leader in developing portfolio risk modeling solutions for financial professionals who assist people in managing pension plans, endowments, foundations, and other complex investment portfolios.

ATA RiskStation collects the data they need for risk modeling from several vendors, including data aggregators, large and small brokerage houses, individual banks, and more. The data received is processed using ATA’s risk engine, and the results are then presented to ATA clients.

A Need to Simplify Data Visualization

The ATA RiskStation platform has run reliably and efficiently on the Windows and Microsoft SQL Server platform; however, with increasing business demands, they required a more readily accessible way to manage and view the data once received, and they needed greater flexibility to enable them to onboard any client, of any size, quickly and efficiently.

ATA RiskStation reached out to TwoConnect to assist them in developing streamlined and automated processes that would help them:

1. Collect the incoming data received from various vendors.
2. Change the data into the ATA staging format.
3. Move the ATA staging data into the ATA SQL Database.
4. Provide a way to view and analyze the data to share with their growing and complex client needs.

Solution

After consulting with TwoConnect, ATA RiskStation elected to migrate to Microsoft Azure and implement a globally available and easily scalable platform.

The solution is a fully Azure-based application managing the entire data flow, from receipt to report. Once in place, Azure Services provides zero effort scaling to manage ATA’s varied use cases and customer scenarios.

The solution included:

Azure Data Factory: To add and collect data for further processing, move that data to a central location, and publish the data to a Dashboard so that it is better consumed by end users. Data factory enabled ATA to create a pipeline, copy data, configure integration runtime, and use the dashboard to analyze the data and drill down with detailed reporting.

Custom Dashboards: To see a snapshot of their most current and critical data visually on a single page. This enabled ATA to provide quick and accessible information to their customers and to see all their most important, and often disparate, metrics in one place.

Reporting: To access more detailed reporting on Dashboard content for a deeper dive analysis.

Microsoft Services used:

• Power BI
• Azure SQL
• Azure Data Factory
• Azure Batch
• Azure Storage
• Azure Virtual Machines

Results

The Azure-based application, implemented by TwoConnect, brought many benefits to ATA RiskStation, including:

• A modular workflow pattern to handle unique customer specific scenarios.
• Zero on-premise server or service infrastructure.
• Elastic capabilities to scale with their customer growth.
• Visibility to all processes through the Azure Portal..
• Timely, and as needed, upgrades of Azure Data and Analysis Services.

With the Power BI and Azure Data Factory managed solution, ATA RiskStation can now onboard any client, of any size, quickly and efficiently without compromising platform performance or reliability for other customers. Additionally, the new Azure-based application enabled ATA’s end users to focus on what they’re good at – analyzing the business. The process of analyzing, collecting, and transforming the financial data into comprehensive standardized reports is left to the system – freeing up time and improving productivity as well as accelerating access to information. This was a win for ATA RiskStation and a win for their customers.

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