Sutherland builds a data-driven culture with Microsoft Azure

Disparate systems and data structures hindering operations and decision-making

Sutherland’s major business is providing digital transformation and customer experience services to their 150+ customers globally. They capture large volumes of  data (structured and unstructured) while providing support for global companies. The company was using disparate applications and spreadsheets for data management. It had also employed large teams that managed data and serviced reporting requirements for internal functions and clients.

The reports were delivered in shared folders, leading to security and efficiency challenges. As their clients’ needs evolved, demanding more valuable insights over just numbers, Sutherland realized that the potential of the data remained untapped. Moreover, the data was neither standardized nor unified. This posed an impediment in their quest to create exceptional customer and employee experiences.

Moving to the cloud to unlock more value from data

Sutherland decided to implement an Enterprise Datawarehouse to manage the enormous volume of data and create a single source of truth. Initially, there was about four terabytes of data and the team implemented an on-premise Microsoft solution to achieve its objectives. However, with rapid expansion and evolving customer requirements, the existing application fell short. It then implemented a solution with SQL Server hosted on Azure VM. However, the team was soon handling data volumes of over 15 TB with about 3,000 datasets. Along with the data volume, the variety of data also kept increasing. The team had to manage semi structured data like JSON, Rest API etc. along with the structured data. The size of semi structured data is about six GB. A natural step to modernize processes and improve efficiency was to go ahead with a unified data and AI platform.

They decided to move to PaaS Services on Azure cloud. After evaluating a few options, the team decided to go with Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform solution. It seemed ideal for Sutherland’s business reporting and advanced analytics requirements as it delivers functionality to add layers of intelligence to applications and generate predictive insights. It chose Azure as it is the only cloud that offers a single comprehensive platform for databases, analytics and data governance services needed to build a Unified Data Platform for insightful and actionable decision-making.

To move beyond the cost and complexity of point solutions, the company implemented Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform by bringing in data from SQL Server, SQL DB, MySQL, business applications like CRM, HRMS, etc. and other unstructured data files, along with other data sources on to Azure Synapse Analytics, Databricks, Azure Data Lake Storage, Logic Apps, Azure Data Factory, Azure ML and PowerShell. Power BI Premium was deployed for enterprise dashboarding and reporting.

This architecture smoothly manages 15 TB of data and can manage a growing data volume too. There are over 8,000 dashboards referred to internally and externally by more than 30,000 users. The data refresh cycle is now more frequent with a data refresh happening every 4 hours right from data source to the dashboards.

“We wanted to establish a unified and standardized data source. Also, we wanted to leverage the data to get valuable insights and analytics that leaders can use for better decision-making. So, we chose to implement an Azure based solution and leverage products such as Power BI, Synapse and ADLS as it best fit to our requirement to enable customers in their digital transformation journey,” says Ameet Chowdhury, Vice President, Head of Tech Infrastructure, Sutherland.

Considering the volume of data and the number of people accessing it, Sutherland faced a challenge with data warehouse governance. It leveraged Microsoft services to ensure secure and scalable access to data.

Gaining operational efficiencies and passing on the benefits to clients

The Microsoft solution helped deliver insights and analytics to Sutherland’s internal platforms and shared services such as administration, finance, facility management, service delivery, and HR. It offered multiple benefits to Sutherland and its clients –

Optimized operations:  Earlier, 300 people were working on delivering platform reports for 150 clients. Now a team of 50 people can cater to the requirements, leading to resource optimization of about 84%.

Cost efficiency and automation: From an organizational perspective, the company moved the entire reporting function to Power BI and saved an estimated US$2.5 million on licensing costs. Organization wide reporting is now done with Power BI with over 8,000 dashboards empowering 30,000 users to customize and create their own reports and analytics.

Better processes: The refresh cycle is now more frequent with data refresh happening every 4 hours. The team manages 10-12 Power BI Premium capacities. It now has improved visibility into the operations and accounts. Account managers can pitch unique services to clients, and program managers have derived better process outcomes.

Self-service: Building data orchestrations is technically challenging as a huge number of integrations have to be built. With Synapse and federated querying, they can bring data as-is and directly query the data. This has enabled self-service for push data, so the need to build integrations is less.

Democratized data: With Azure Synapse’s serverless pool, Sutherland allows users to access their data and work with it. Thus, they are democratizing data and enabling upskilling as teams develop technical skills to work with data.

Looking ahead

Having experienced the benefits of moving mission-critical workloads to Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, Sutherland is now evaluating MS Purview to classify, secure, and govern data. “The enterprise data warehouse solution is used by our internal team and shared services teams. With positive feedback on its reliability, availability of critical dashboards and cost-effectiveness from existing users, many other business functions want to go ahead with the solution,” reveals Sujit Sahu, Senior Director, Enterprise Data Management, Sutherland.

With high-quality, real-time data, automated reports, and analytics, business functions derive quick, current, and valuable insights for optimum management decisions. It has encouraged more and more leaders within Sutherland to push for digitization within their business units.

“Moving to the cloud with Microsoft has accelerated our journey to empower every person to manage data better and connect to the single source of truth,” sums up Vikrenth R, Director, Enterprise Data Management, Sutherland.