About:
VUKA Group brings together people and organisations to connect with information and to each other. With >20yrs experience in Africa, the group serves the Energy, Mining, Smart Mobility & Transport and Retail sectors, through a range of industry touch points across digital, print and in-person platforms. With a commitment to data at its core the group is well positioned to support industry stakeholders today and into the future. Operating from Cape Town, South Africa the group is actively involved in projects across continental Africa and boasts a diverse African team who take great pride in the work they do for the sectors and markets they serve.
Industry: Events Services
Employees: 200+
Website: https://wearevuka.com/
The Challenge:
VUKA Group needed a sophisticated approach to data and reduce their reliance on manual processing using spreadsheets. Reports and insight were generated from scratch in Excel each time, requiring significant manual effort while being tightly restricted on data volumes and challenged by data silos.
VUKA emphasises customer-facing projects and initiatives over internal measurement and business intelligence efforts, resulting in resource allocation reflecting this prioritization. VUKA began to experience a growing impact on its ability to comprehend and enhance its operational efficiency, which echoed throughout the entire company.
One example was understanding Sales Pacing against targets for long-term projects. This was critical to inform financial planning but impossible with the existing infrastructure. Another such instance was aligning CRM and Finance data to ensure accurate invoicing.
With Datalab’s help, VUKA was able to set up automated data pipelines to power both daily operational and financial reporting, as well as external client reporting for brands they manage.
The Solution:
The VUKA team recognized the necessity of investing in an improved data strategy. Initially, their priority was to concentrate on their core operations and construct a scalable platform that could facilitate reporting and analytics across all organizational functions. The initial phase involved the automation of previously manual reports through the implementation of a robust platform. This automation promised to reclaim valuable time for the team, enhance the precision of metrics, and empower them to engage with data in more advanced and well-informed ways.
The automated data platform was envisioned as cloud-based, cost-efficient, and adaptable to accommodate the ever-growing volumes of data. The intended solution aimed to expedite the time required to gain insights, eliminate the potential for human error, and enable in-depth analysis and data-driven decision-making processes.
Technologies:
Azure, FiveTran, Snowflake, Power BI
“VUKA wanted a partner who understood the end to end data journey - architecture for storage, data modelling and visualisation - following initial introductions and workshops, they chose Datalab.” – Reza
The Results