The BI team faced some fundamental changes. After a restructuring of the data department the responsibilities of the developers changed, and the team inherited a complex reporting and data model landscape with varying levels of documentation.”

• Dashboard variety and overlap: A wide array of dashboards existed, sometimes with overlapping content, making updates and maintenance more time-consuming.
• Need for clearer lineage and ownership: With frequent changes and updates over time, users sometimes found it challenging to confirm the freshness and accuracy of dashboard content.
• Diversity in development styles: Power BI reports reflected the influences of different creators, resulting in varying approaches and transparency.
• Evolving developer roles: Developers were expected to broaden their technical responsibilities, covering areas from interface design to data engineering, alongside evolving product ownership.
• Established business habits: The organisation was used to responsive support and quick-turnaround requests, presenting a new challenge for expectation management.

Stakeholders sought direction, clarity on BI services and dashboards to be supported, and a pathway toward a streamlined and consistent reporting landscape.

The results were tangible and rapid. The team’s new approach delivered high-quality dashboards each sprint, with each aligned to a clear set of technical and reporting standards. This new pace marked a clear improvement in delivery predictability and impact.

Business teams now benefit from a streamlined reporting landscape. By consolidating the dashboard environment, the team reduced the amount of reports by over 75% while increasing the overall usage of the BI platform. This created a better-managed BI environment focused on a single source of truth, while also creating a more manageable environment for the BI team to maintain. The resulting standard dashboards, covering areas such as gaming performance, guest satisfaction, and compliance statistics, mean fewer metric conflicts across departments and more aligned decision-making.

For developers, responsibilities are clearer, and the focus on both technical depth and collaborative ownership has cultivated a more productive and proactive culture. The transition was handled with care, respecting the adjustment period for all and deliberately maintaining an approachable leadership style.

An unforeseen, but welcome benefit of this work is that the reporting developers working on new data models gave meaningful and actionable input for the data foundation team on where to focus when building up a ‘silver’ layer in the data lake.

Don’t underestimate the value of investing in information architecture before scaling reporting solutions. Success came from clarifying roles, defining consistent KPIs, and balancing central control with self-service agility. To keep progress from slowing down, future priorities should include strengthening data governance, especially around the silver layer of the data stack. In addition, continued development of skills aligned with the ever evolving BI model, with an emphasis on data modelling over pure dashboard design.

A clear takeaway: setting and maintaining standards, both technically and in process, forms the backbone of sustainable BI. Xomnia contributed to the development of these practices, partnering with the BI team to help embed a sustainable and governed self-service BI approach.