Polestar Analytics

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the executive architect and data director of the #1 ice manufacturing and delivery company in the US. My company has more than 1,000 employees and serve customers in most of the US. I oversee my company's BI and data analytics development to support all business operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Polestar Solutions & Services?

I started the BI initiative in my company two years ago. My overseas team is facing challenges in BI reporting performance and delivery due to their lack of skills and organization in this area.

I also would like my team to leverage our current BI solution more to engage business users better to have much better data insight. Therefore, I look for consulting service to review the status of my current team and BI solution to provide recommendations and best business practice to my team.

What were your goals for this project?

My project goal is to have solutions to current challenge tasks, to identify gaps and provide recommendations to current team and BI development strategy, and to provide a development road map to my team to give my business users better data insight.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I talked to numerous BI and data analytics vendors all the time. I look for vendors who has expert knowledge in the BI and data analytics areas, who has rich experiences in the areas, who is a qualified partner of my BI vendor, and who can provide references to support their claims in the areas.

For a few of these qualified vendors, I conducted several interviews with them to see if they understand what I am looking for and if they have previous projects to back up their work. And, finally, I looked at their cost to find out Polestar is both cost competitive, understand what I need, and have the technical proficiency to meet my requirements.

Describe the project in detail.

Once the vendor was selected, I gave them my requirements as well as a list of help from my team. The vendor immediately charted a very clear path to meet my requirements as well as project deliverable and its time line. The vendor separated all requirements into three major areas: dashboard, server, and report delivery, and assigned consultants to work on each of those areas.

During the project, they provided daily update in both conference calls and emails as well as weekly update to stakeholders and my CIO. During the four weeks of the project, work was delivered as promised with great quality. Both my CIO and stakeholders were very pleased by their work. At the end of the project, they provided numerous recommendations, best practice examples, and development road map for my team.

What was the team composition?

The vendor team has a project manager, an architect, and two developers. The project manager handles task assignments, follow-ups, and communications among teammates, CIO, and stakeholders. One developer worked on report delivery. The other developer worked on dashboard. The architect worked on servers, infrastructure, and work review of other developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Out of the four week project, the vendor provided audit reports on my BI architecture, servers, dashboard, and report delivery. It also revamped a dashboard as best practice example. In addition, it provided numerous best practice examples and solutions to the task list from my team.

Finally, it provided me a development road map for future path of my team. Compared to the work of my current team, they demonstrated efficiency and performance improvement by more than 50% as well as quality improvement opportunities.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The vendor team is very responsive and agile to my team's and CIO's requirements. They delivered work for tasks which were not even in original scope of my project. The consultants responded to questions and jumped on conference calls on short notice.

They also kept us informed of their progress through daily stand-ups, email updates, and weekly stakeholder meetings. They provided documents as follow-ups to close any outstanding issues. The workflow was smooth and very efficient.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I love the technical competence of this company. They truly know what they are doing. My best impression is that, once I told the team my requirements, they can figure out what to do quickly, deliver correctly, communicate clearly, and finish work as expected or beyond expectation.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I do not have any complain about this company. They executed their work so well that I do consider it as a close partner in my future career.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a group technical manager for HCL Technologies, which is a multinational IT service and consulting company. We’re based in India.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polestar?

We were looking for a digital solution to perform analytic work. We considered out-of-box solutions like Power BI and Tableau but decided we wanted a consulting partner to help us find the right solution.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Polestar helped us choose and manage Qlik, an end-to-end data management platform. They’re currently helping us understand and create analytics for our organization.

They’ve helped us by creating data visualizations, creating a finance dashboard, and integrating our reporting into one database. They then integrated that dashboard with our existing application.

What is the team composition?

We hired a manager to oversee their work, and they provided 20 developers. I managed the analytics program they worked on. Their developers served as an extension of our own team.

How did you come to work with Polestar?

We considered multiple vendors and had discussions with each of them. We requested a proof of concept (POC) and Polestar was the quickest to deliver. We also chose them because they were competent in SQL and various other technologies.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Polestar more than three years ago, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They delivered a comprehensive dashboard very promptly. Their work has helped us consolidate our business processes in one place; our leadership can now access all their information through a single dashboard. Their developers proved to be technical experts who were also collaborative and supportive. They really understood our business and core strategies.

How did Polestar perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was largely effective. We held frequent calls, and they provided risk management by warning us about emerging issues. We didn’t use any task tracking tools.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re extremely collaborative, and they have a wide range of expertise. They always have resources available when we require additional consultation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

We definitely plan to continue relying on them. I’d recommend them to anyone for their technical expertise. They’re always ready to help, so I think any company would succeed working with Polestar.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am working as a VP - Analytics for our company providing analytics for our manufacturing operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Polestar Solutions & Services?

We were looking for an enterprise-wide data visualization platform. We wanted to build a platform that could provide detailed insights on KPIs to our management team. We choose Qlik as our Business Intelligence platform and Polestar as Qlik Services Partner.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of the project was to set a Data & Visualization solution for enterprise

SOLUTION

How did you select Polestar Solutions & Services?

Polestar did a diagnosis of our existing applications and helped us in optimizing some of the most complex dashboards. They also participated in discussions with Business stakeholders and developed prototypes for different use cases.

Apart from this, Polestar was involved in implementation with service support. Being our license partner as well, guided us on having a harmonized licensing strategy.

Describe the project in detail.

The project was about BI visualization tool Qlik implementation and building solution for different subject.

What was the team composition?

Polestar helped us on data visualization specialist and platform architect.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The overall project helped us transform business with use of data & analytics using qlik tool and improve business efficiency across the different departments.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was very good. Polestar was quite responsive.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Very knowledgeable, humble, and very strong commitment to driving customer success.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None