Polygone Group takes insightful business decisions with Power BI

About the customer – Polygone Group

Created in 1981, Polygone has established itself as a trusted partner for companies, communities and individuals. Their services aim at preparing and accompanying the action of the building and outdoor development trades. Polygone Group employs over 300 people in Luxembourg and in Belgium and has an annual turnover of more than 33 million euros.

Polygone's Data Journey

Back in 2012, Polygone lacked a consolidated view on data because the different entities were using multiple ERP systems, accounting and controlling software. This resulted in the fact that they could not capture useful insights, for instance about the profitability of each worksite. The group had thus decided to implement a unified ERP system and make sure the data was centralized, used to get proper insights and support the decision process. In 2018, Polygone made the choice for a single ERP system, initially on premise and with a migration to a cloud solution later.

To take it one step further, Polygone Group was looking for a Data Insight tool to get rid of the manual work and the laborious process that still had to be performed every month in order to get the right reports available and accessible for the right people. One of their main goals was to undergo a so-called data democratization, meaning that useful information is accessible to all employees in an intuitive way and can be used to take the appropriate decisions.

Power BI as Data Insight tool

After careful consideration of the different tools on the market, the group chose Microsoft Power BI as a Data Insight tool for the following reasons:

• The Microsoft stack was well known within the company, ensuring that Power BI could be deployed and used very easily

• Simple ease of adoption, both front-end (Web / Excel / Teams) and back-end (from VBA Macro in Excel to DAX language)

• Optimizing the infrastructure cost through leveraging previous investments (Office 365)

Vynta (former Agilos) helps the group to optimize the use of Power BI as a Data Insight tool and make sure that it is used for decisional purposes. This results now in a solution that is adopted by more than 40 people to take the right business decisions and to turn Polygone into a data-driven company.

The results

With Power BI, all stakeholders now have access to one and the same, the most simple and up-to-date information. Different dashboards were made for cross-departmental purposes, amongst other:

• Sales: comparison between different services or analysis on product line modules (location, cross-selling opportunities, …)

• Planning: outline on the difference between what was planned and what was realized (to optimize the planning, number of people, costs, distribution, …)

• Management: to follow-up on different KPIs such as

  - Average cost of Waste management

  - Localization of the containers, dump trucks, ...

  - Fleet in circulation

  - Fuel consumption (consolidating and analyzing different types of data on a daily basis to be able to make appropriate price adjustments)

• Cockpit: to follow the progress of each separate KPI and have a clear view of the KPI owners.

Next steps with Vynta

Cédric Klein, CIO at Polygone Group, explains:

“The way we are managing our business now completely changed by using Power BI: we are able to take the appropriate decisions based on real facts and got all the stakeholders on board to make the data live within the organization. Our next step is to fully migrate to the cloud and to increase data capture by using Power Apps & Low Code Solutions. We are confident that Vynta can help us on the long term thanks to their technical expertise, global vision on the business and on-demand approach which includes training and coaching. With their help, we are sure that we use the latest features in Power BI and that our data and way of working moves along with our business and the constantly evolving market!”