Data Quality
The Challenge
Our client, a German chemical company, was looking for methodical and technical support in the process optimisation of the internal data quality management (DQM) and the re-factoring of the DQM portal. A separate department had already been established in the company to ensure the quality guidelines of data from different SAP systems. This department is responsible for data quality management in master and inventory data maintenance. Furthermore, it is your task to advise and support the departments in data quality, among other things with analysis reports on data quality. To do this, you receive queries from the departments on data quality, which you then analyse and make available in the form of reports. On the one hand, these reports show faulty data records. In addition, holistic reports with information on the error rate can be generated. A DQM portal has already been established to consolidate reporting, but its functionality has reached its limits.
This internal DQM portal for reporting, which is now inadequate, was to be upgraded to a new software status. In order to meet the challenge, TIQ Solutions was commissioned with the further development and re-factoring of the DQM portal, as this could only be implemented inadequately with internal software. In addition to the challenge of re-factoring, the platform was to be expanded with additional functions. Adapting the platform to the company's corporate design was just as much a requirement as intuitive usability and an intelligent responsive design for usability on different end devices.
In addition to the development of the internal DQM portal, our client also required technical and methodological support in the further development of internal data quality management.
- Use Case
Chemical company
- Development of a DQM platform for the creation of data quality analyses and support in the implementation of a professional and methodical data quality management
- Goal setting
- Re-factoring and further development of the DQM platform
- Developing a Responsive Design for the use of the application on different end devices
- Expansion of the portal to include procedural usage options (testing, development, documentation of requests for reports)
- Process optimisation and team development of the Data Quality Management department
- Establishment of a technical and methodical data quality management system
- Technologies
- MS SQL
- C#
- SSRS Microsoft Reporting Service
- SAP Integration Service
- Visual Studio/ Visual Studio Code
- Java Script /JQuery
- CSS
- Git
- Bootstrap
The Solution
TIQ Solutions carried out a re-factoring of the existing DQM portal and extended it with further functionalities. In the first step, we adapted the re-design according to the client's corporate design and improved the usability based on UX and UI design. Furthermore, we transferred the project into a development-friendly versioning system.
Together with the client, we carried out a technical and methodological expansion and optimisation of the environment and tasks in the various areas of data quality management and its process-related design. First, the strategic orientation was sharpened by conducting workshops and communicated with internal clients. This involved, among other things, the differentiation from other departments, requirements management and order processing. The next step was to develop methods for establishing a team structure and developing the team members. For this purpose, department-specific professional and technical employee roles were defined and the team was assigned according to knowledge and skills. Agile methods and the creation of a value system characterised by openness and participation are used to manage the employees. Another tool is the practical use of a dynamic workload planning system developed by us for the employees, for all project and department-relevant activities.
For the professional and technical process optimisation, we developed a deployment and release management process with the client for the implementation of all orders of data quality management analyses.
The Result
For our client, we relaunched a DQM portal that is to be used throughout the company. By implementing a UX and UI design, it is easy to use for the end users and can be used on different devices due to its responsive presentation. The main functionalities of the DQM portal include:
- Create requests for data quality reports
- Create requests for data analysis reports
- Accessing and embedding reports from SSRS into the platform via Iframe and others
- Administration area to maintain report metadata and user permissions
- Dashboard functionality for internal data quality analysis (team internal)
- Dashboard functionality for “clients
- User area for preferred and requested reports
- Intelligent search via parameters such as source table, rule used, etc.
The clean and stable code base in a customised environment ensures the independent further development of the application by the customer himself, even in productive use.
The team and the cooperation of the Data Quality Management department were optimised with regard to an efficient work structure and team culture in order to support the specialised departments even more effectively and competently in data quality problems and to carry out in-depth data quality analyses throughout the company.
- Kundenvorteile
- Concentration of the team on technical analyses and their advisory function vis-à-vis the specialist departments
- DQM process optimisation by linking release and deployment process with use of DQM portal
- Outsourcing of portal support to resources with technical expertise in the corporate environment
- Use of know-how in web development
- Establish development guidelines such as coding standard and versioning systems
- Establishment of testing, staging and a productive environment