Challenge

• Sopra Steria sought to develop an organized data system to produce wholistic and in-depth reports.

Solution

• Pentaho Data Integration and Pentaho Business Analytics automates data processing and improves access to data.

Outcome

• Decreased wait time to integrate new data sources into their warehouse.
• Increased business productivity by employing analysis of industry metrics.
• Improved users’ understanding of analytics.
• Achieved low total cost of software ownership with high functionality.

Pentaho’s solutions enable AMT to grow as their data increases.

The Challenge :  Find a Low-Cost Analytics Tool Able To Support Future Growth

The Association For Manufacturing Technology (AMT) represents and promotes U.S.-based manufacturing technology and its members: those who design, build, sell, and service the continuously evolving technology that lies at the heart of manufacturing. To better serve the needs of this vast industry, AMT created an analytics division and a proprietary tool, MTInsight, to empower the members of their association.

With Pentaho, we can display real-time data in powerful, easy-to-use dashboards and even optimize it for mobile, which helps our members make informed decisions that affect their business performance.

– Julie Peppers, Project Manager, the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT)

MTInsight provides information on segmented markets, benchmarking surveys, industry forecasts, competitors, customers and the manufacturing supply chain. With millions of data points from multiple sources in a data management warehouse in the cloud, MTInsight provides true business intelligence with user-friendly apps and cutting-edge report packages.

AMT needed to replace costly “per-seat” licensed analytics software to reduce costs. Additionally, the company wanted to have an embed analytics solution that would provide specialized dashboards to end-users. Rapid query turn-around time would allow AMT’s platform the ability to provide near real-time access to data. The solution needed to support their long-term business goals which included mobile compatibility, member adoption, wider rollout, trade show lead retrieval, and better visualizations. AMT wanted a software that would be a scalable solution that can grow with analytics needs and new technology.

AMT needed to replace costly “per-seat” licensed analytics software to reduce costs. Additionally, the company wanted to have an embed analytics solution that would provide specialized dashboards to end-users. Rapid query turn-around time would allow AMT’s platform the ability to provide near real-time access to data. The solution needed to support their long-term business goals which included mobile compatibility, member adoption, wider rollout, trade show lead retrieval, and better visualizations. AMT wanted a software that would be a scalable solution that can grow with analytics needs and new technology.

The Solution: Pentaho Data Integration, Pentaho Business Analytics

AMT now uses Pentaho’s  Data Integration for flat files and web servers hosting industry data. Pentaho’s Business Analytics is an embedded solution that provides custom dashboards and applications to deliver targeted analytics. AMT worked with Pentaho services and consulting teams to aid with mobile extensibility and programming.

As AMT implemented Pentaho, they quickly realized its power and scalability. Once they had created new query paths and set up reporting cubes, utilizing Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) on the back end, they found that they could quickly run queries on the data wanted by their association members. This specifically required PDI to connect to either MySQL or SQL servers to pull data from sources such as government websites or economic data streams. This data is then hosted via Amazon Web Services and reported on with their proprietary tool. In this tool, MTInsight includes many custom dashboards by leveraging Pentaho’s custom dashboard team, Webdetails, to meet their customers’ needs. As the MTInsight team built out their dashboards, they realized that customizing every new app they created was unnecessary. Moreover, with Pentaho’s native HTML5 integration, they could easily extend their apps to mobile.

The Outcome: Pentaho Delivers Powerful Analytics

Members now use intuitive applications to analyze industry metrics and optimize their business processes. They have reduced query time and integrated new data sources to optimize MTInsight’s data warehouse. This has improved end-user comfort and understanding of the power of analytics. Services and support ensure that underlying analytics will run smoothly when embedded. There is a large community support for development and innovation.

An immediate benefit was the caching ability when running queries. Due to Pentaho’s use of the cache to hold data, queries that used to be cumbersome are now faster and easier for association members to display the data they need using the parameter selector options. Additionally, AMT has been able to rapidly scale their data warehouse, integrating new data sources that their members want to access. In turn, this has given their members proprietary data to help them make decisions that increase sales and decrease costs. Some customers have also reported significant increases in tradeshow leads; but, more importantly, all customers can approach data analytics with new clarity and an easy-to-use solution. MTInsight reduced time and cost of the data integration process and allowed IT resources to work on new projects.

With Pentaho, MTInsight is a scalable, low-cost solution that can ensure that AMT customers can gain value without passing on additional costs. Moreover, with Pentaho’s support and services, the MTInsight team has the expertise needed to ensure that their applications can be built in a way that provides the powerful analytics their members demand.