A Power Bi Case Study

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Client Overview

Company: A leading UK construction services group that delivers the complete construction solution.
Industry: Construction (Civil - Commercial).
Systems: Sage 200 for finance, Eque2 for contract cost management.
Infrastructure: On-premise Windows Server (SQL Server backend for both systems).

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The Challenge

The client relies heavily on Sage 200 for financial data and Eque2 for project costing and contract management. However:

• Data was siloed across systems

• Weekly and monthly reporting was manual, time-consuming, and often delayed

• Management lacked real-time visibility into job performance, leading to cost overruns and decision delays

• Finance teams struggled to reconcile budget vs actuals efficiently.

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Objectives

• Unify financial and operational data from Sage 200 and Eque2.

• Automate reporting to reduce manual overhead.

• Provide real-time insights to project managers, finance, and directors.

• Improve visibility into:

  • Job profitability

  • Committed vs actual costs

  • Retentions and applications for payment

  • Cash flow projections

  • Accident Reporting

  • Training and Certification

  • Management Accounts.

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Solution Overview

 

Data Integration

• Data Gateway: Installed an on-premises Power BI Gateway to securely access data from Sage 200 and Eque2 SQL databases.

• ETL Process:

  • Used Power Query in Power BI Desktop to transform and model data

  • Merged Sage 200 ledger data with Eque2 contract/job cost tables

  • Created relationships across cost codes, job numbers, applications, and payments

  • Used Power Automate to both create and schedule targeted reporting.

 

Report Development

• Developed a suite of interactive Power BI reports and dashboards, including:

  • Project Performance Dashboard – Budget vs Actual vs Committed Costs

  • Cash Flow Forecasting – Based on application/payment schedules

  • Work In Progress (WIP) – Including valuation, retentions, and accruals

  • Commercial Dashboard – Profitability by job, region, client, and PM

  • Supplier & Material Dashboards - Spend by supplier, job, and waste

  • Resource Allocation Tracker – Labour and plant visibility.

 

Deployment

• Reports were published to Power BI Service.

• Scheduled refreshes via gateway every 2 hours.

• Role-level security (RLS) ensured:

  • Managers only saw the information that is for meant for them

  • Finance saw portfolio-wide insights

  • Board had visibility to executive level kpi's and financial information.

 

Results

• Reporting Time:

  • Information is now available within 2 hours of an activity.

• Decision-Making:

  • Project managers now act on daily job cost insights.

• Forecasting:

  • Significant time reduction in building a sales and costs forecast.

• Collaboration:

  • Finance and operations now use one version of the truth.

• Waste:

  • Part loads and other forms of waste are now monitored and measured.

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Key Learnings

• Integrating on-premise data with cloud tools is seamless with the Power BI Gateway.

• Even legacy systems like Sage 200 and Eque2 can deliver modern BI with the right data model.

• A centralised Power BI solution builds trust across departments by making data accessible, timely, and visual.

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Next Steps

• Automate data from site forms and Excel spreadsheets via Power Automate and Power Apps.

• Incorporate timesheet and payroll data for labour cost variance analysis.

• Extend reporting to mobile for on-site consumption.

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Testimonial

"(The team) have helped enhance, develop, and integrate our entire Eque2/SAGE cost reporting systems into Power BI. We now have access to live data dashboards to indicate job performance, costs, revenue, and profit margins. In addition, we have developed a concise set of reporting groups which help manage & control several departments within the business. The improvements are substantial; the costs savings & efficiencies make the return on investment quite substantial, and we have already mapped out a plan for further development which is making accounting exciting again!“

 

Finance Director - Infrastructure Construction

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