A collaborative partnership with Transparity enabled advanced flexibility, reporting capabilities, and scalable processes.

About Polyco Healthline

As a leading provider of PPE, hygiene, and healthcare services throughout supply chains, Polyco Healthline were already utilising advanced Business Intelligence practices to integrate data-driven results throughout their strategies. 

Keen to continue optimising their services, a collaborative partnership with Transparity enabled advanced flexibility, reporting capabilities, and scalable processes. In turn, this elevated their data strategy to uncover greater insights and deliver truly excellent services. 

The challenge

Recognising the need for greater data models 

Our partnership with Polyco Healthline began when they expressed the wish to optimise their data models to navigate the challenges that company growth and evolution of the business. 

As datasets continued to grow alongside an expansion in services and products offered, current data models began taking a longer period of time to ingest and process, impacting data analysis results and productivity. Recognising this as an area that could be optimised further, Transparity and Polyco Healthline worked together to improve performance and enrich insights. 

As well as the need for improved performance to support growing datasets, another area that Polyco Healthline wished to optimise was their reporting capabilities. Wishing to enhance the insights their reports provided even further, a streamlined solution that took advantage of all aspects of the current CRM was realised. 

The solution

The implementation stage 

We understand that enterprises should be able to utilise and harness their data in any situation, without limitation, to generate truly data-driven insights that can optimise strategies and operations. As such, engaged in a collaborative partnership with Polyco Healthline, we implemented an Analysis Services model to increase the speed of insights, access previously unavailable historical data, and bring a wealth of other advantages. 

With successful implementation, this model enabled improved flexibility and agility in analytics, alleviating concerns over the speed of processing. While before, ingesting and reloading data would take hours for completion, requiring data workers to reload data overnight, this operation could now be completed in minutes – seconds in some cases. Now, with optimised overall control of their data, Polyco Healthline were able to adapt and change their interactions to accompany a wide range of use cases in real-time. 

This emphasis on greater speeds and flexibility was vital when navigating the challenges presented in recent years, when an international pandemic placed great pressure and stress on enterprises such as Polyco Healthline. 

With an advanced speed of insight, operations could be streamlined further, ensuring that those in need could reach the PPE and other services required in a period of unrest and many unexpected challenges. 

Enabling effortless, insightful reporting 

Through utilising the new capabilities of the BI solution, Polyco Healthline were also able to increase the capacity and areas of insight within their reporting. 

Conventionally, while data may reside within a CRM, without correct integration this data may not be used in reporting, reducing the overall quality of reports and eliminating access to vital insights. With new reporting capabilities realised after collaborative discussions, we were able to successfully enable advanced CRM reporting to present new insights to the Polyco Healthline team. 

One such capability allowed reports that measured metrics against sales, overlaid with information on the distribution of free samples. The data in these reports helped improve the distribution of free samples, removing them entirely where they were not required, and minimising them where appropriate to reduce the impact on stock challenges resulting from the pandemic. The removal of unnecessary free samples resulted in a direct cost saving for the business. 

With increased reporting and intelligence, the Polyco Healthline team have now been able to enhance their data-driven strategy by further optimising core avenues for key growth, as well as areas that need further efficiency – providing needed insight in uncertain and challenging periods. 

Systems that encourage self-service and experimentation 

Due to the design and approach of the data model build, the team at Polyco Healthline were able to create custom reports for themselves, delivering on the self-service requirement of the solution. 

Able to quickly harness data on-demand, this approach greatly encourages experimentation that may lead to further innovations in the future, allowing data workers to consider new approaches through the creation of more complex reports and analysis. If the report does not provide the desired output in the first attempt, it can easily and quickly be amended until it does, giving data workers greater control over their data than ever before. 

Not only does this emphasise the flexibility and agility already implemented, but also increases overall reliability in results gained due to comfort and trust placed in using new models and systems. 

The outcome

At Transparity, one of our core values is in building a strong, trusted relationship between our clients as we engage in collaborative efforts. Working alongside Polyco Healthline, this was no different. Throughout any involvement, we ensure that our efforts are clearly communicated – often close to our clients, to ensure that they are always aware, and comfortable, with our approach and involvement. Prompt responses and the technical ability to meet the objectives of Polyco as they drive their business forward are key to the relationship. 

Building a trusted relationship is also vital when unexpected challenges arise, as both our teams can collaborate in finding an optimised solution, while also removing any risks or issues that may arise in the meantime. 

Throughout our involvement with Polyco Healthline, we maintained clear and honest communication, clearly outlining what our project and involvement will require and relevant timescales, avoiding the potential for any miscommunication or misunderstanding.