From hindsight to foresight: Wipro’s business insights journey with Microsoft Data Lake

Need to move up the business intelligence maturity curve

Different teams in Wipro used diverse applications for data management and reporting across critical workflows such as order-to-cash, finance, record-to-report, source-to-pay, etc. This meant a lack of cohesive reporting and analytics system. Wipro relied on on-premise applications to create about 500 reports either manually or as scheduled jobs. These were not always real-time and required considerable effort and time to generate and disseminate.

The company recognized the need for complete integration from both the process and platform perspective. The aim was to have a single version of the truth and elevate the efficiency of its workflows.

It needed to completely transform its data and reporting solution to store extensive and diverse datasets, perform real-time data processing, and deliver diagnostic and prescriptive analytics. It sought an advanced analytics platform that would be cloud-native, user-friendly, secure, and resilient. 

More scalability, security, and added layers of intelligence

Wipro evaluated several products on parameters such as scale, performance, integration with existing applications, and security. Azure Data Lake emerged as the optimal choice, meeting all the requirements. It was the ideal choice as it integrated seamlessly with Office 365 and Power BI.  Wipro chose to deploy the secure cloud-based, enterprise data lake solution for data management, reporting requirements, and analytical workloads, allowing it to do more with less. 

Across 18 months, teams from Wipro and Microsoft worked closely to understand the requirements, ensure uninterrupted operations, and successfully design and deploy the Azure Data Lake solution. Instructor-led training sessions were conducted to facilitate a smooth transition to the new solution and train employees to use it effectively.

Azure Data Lake has offered Wipro the following benefits:

• It has resulted in the consolidation of data, enabling centralized reporting that integrates both SAP- and non-SAP-based data. Employees could do away with local versions of reports or offline reports, fostering a streamlined and integrated data environment.
• The solution has ensured that reports are automatically generated with the latest data. The transition to the cloud-based solution has eliminated scalability challenges, empowering employees to create reports effortlessly.
• It has significantly raised data and reporting maturity levels. Transitioning from static reports, Wipro now generates close to 50 insight-driven, interactive dashboards. Over 10,000 users leverage these dashboards for in-depth analysis and informed decision-making.
• With features like single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication and other advanced security features, Wipro provides role-based access to information. Azure Data Lake also allows Wipro to define levels of sensitivity for data and manage vulnerabilities, which has eliminated duplicity of data and elevated the overall security posture.
• Wipro has made significant progress in realizing its vision of having a self-service BI environment. It has moved up the analytics maturity curve, through prescriptive analytics and gained insights into operations using diagnostic analytics. It has made some progress towards predictive analytics as well. The company’s objective is to enhance its predictive and prescriptive analytics capabilities, striving for a higher level of foresight that will enable successful business outcomes.

Setting the stage for more business intelligence

Melvin Goveas, Finance App Lead & Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Wipro, shares, “By Integrating multiple systems into Azure Data Lake, we have started Data Transformation journey at Wipro. As we mature from descriptive analytics to prescriptive and diagnostic, Azure Data Lake will complement the business transformation Journey with more actionable insights, paving the way for higher-quality decision-making.”

Wipro is looking forward to leveraging Azure Data Lake further as a master data repository across all applications. It is looking at Microsoft Fabric for a well-orchestrated data estate for predictive and prescriptive analysis. It aims to empower business users for seamless scalability and accelerated analysis using AI and ML capabilities. It is also exploring how Microsoft Fabric and Copilot can be used with Microsoft Power BI to complement end-user reporting so that business users can access data and insights needed to make data-driven decisions. 

Wipro has identified use cases to be implemented and is prepared with the guardrails and data sets to explore how it can instantly convert data into actionable insights. It intends to take self-sufficiency to the next level through employee training sessions for the creation of compelling visualizations and interactive reports.