Strengthening its Operations, Colliers Deployed Robust Power BI Solutions with AWS
AWS and Colliers partnered to deploy the best Power BI solutions for operational efficiency
Challenges
Colliers is a global leader in real estate services and investment management. With a team of 18,000 professionals, Colliers operates in 65 countries and manages US$46 billion in assets. The company executes 54,000 lease/sale transactions annually.
With a vision for modernization, efficiency, and excellence, Colliers aimed to provide its workforce with critical, relevant, and up-to-date insights at its fingertips. They turned to Queryon to help with the design and deployment of a worldwide Power BI solution. But the project posed challenges from multiple aspects including data size and complexity, user interface, access privileges, and above all, what relevant analytics to display.
Vast amounts of data were being generated from tens of thousands of professionals and transactions, as well as millions of website visits. Although daunting, the amount of data was also exciting because Power BI is an excellent tool for mining the data and deriving useful business intelligence from it. Prior to Power BI, the Colliers analytical team had to gather data and manually build reports in order to provide information to the field agents. Delays in providing the report might result in a lost opportunity to close a deal. And because of the large international workforce, the solution had to be user-friendly and be able to handle multiple languages. This is when the team decided to partner up with AWS to efficiently deploy Power BI solutions for operational efficiency.
Initiatives
Power BI was the tool of choice to tackle the challenges. Because data accuracy was a key aspect, extensive audits were performed which resulted in the strengthening of several extraction transformations and loading processes to eliminate data issues.
To address the different organizational access privileges, row-level security was implemented. As a user logs into the Power BI solution, the user will only be able to see what the specific profile allows. Profiles were created for regional managers, country managers, and real estate associates, to name a few.
An important strategy was to have the right mix of talent from both Colliers and Queryon, along with AWS. Being foundational to the project, Colliers’ vision and business needs were inspiring and well-articulated. The Queryon team pulled from multi-faceted experience to bring that vision to fruition by devising simple yet powerful visual reports, navigation, and functionality.
Results
The synergies and collaboration between Colliers and Queryon, along with AWS, contributed to the success of the solution design. After deployment in several regions of the globe, Colliers professionals can now easily access key up-to-date business intelligence about their properties, which gives them a competitive edge. With the information, they can make the right decisions faster and therefore close transactions more promptly. Similarly, regional and country managers can now analyze their portfolios, thus managing their teams more efficiently with the opportunity to maximize their potential. The use of Power BI resulted in improved competitiveness, productivity, and informed decision-making. In turn, these values not only boosted the confidence of the workforce but also accelerated the success of the Colliers team and their clients.
