Client
A full-service HVAC contractor based in the US
Industry
Building Maintenance
Services
BI/Data Analytics
Tech
.NET, C#, Microsoft Azure, Power BI, SharePoint

Challenge

A US-based full-service HVAC provider offering a variety of building solutions was overwhelmed by the tedious and time-consuming task of manually generating reports for its customers — property owners. Their process involved copying and pasting building performance data from multiple sources, adjusting it, and generating reports in PDF format for sharing. It was not only slow but also prone to errors. Looking for an answer to their trouble, the company reached out to ITRex for expertise in BI and data analytics solutions to build a proprietary automated reporting tool.

Our task was to:
Assess the current data ecosystem and reporting workflows throughout the organization
Design technical vision
Create custom reports in Power BI
Build an automated reporting solution and integrate it with third-party services retrieving data on building energy consumption and other performance metrics
Implement role-level security to ensure that each customer sees only data related to them
Make reports accessible online via a link to eliminate the need to generate and send PDF files

Solution

The automated reporting solution built by ITRex has allowed the company to easily connect to various third-party sources of data and automatically produce two types of custom reports for sharing with their customers. Its key features are:
Automated data extraction from the client’s internal desktop application and third-party data sources using custom-built applications in Azure Functions (this data can be pulled in real time or at intervals)
Custom reports in Power BI on building maintenance issues and KPIs such as electricity, natural gas, water, and steam cost, consumption, and savings
Ability to slice and dice building performance data (YoY trends, daily consumption, monthly consumption, custom date selection, % difference, etc.)
Ability to share reports with customers via a link, providing them with access to real-time or near-real-time building performance data
Role-level security to ensure that customers access only their data
Option to easily add new customers by creating a new account in MS Azure Active Directory

Impact

Significant cost savings for the client through the automation of data collection and reporting processes
Next-level scalability with an easy process of new customer onboarding
Improved accuracy through the elimination of manual processes prone to human error

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