Overview
Orange Sky, a charity providing laundry, shower, and conversation services, approached Report Simple to build a Power BI solution that could accurately report their social impact. With data scattered across legacy Excel files, an outdated Portal, and their proprietary system, Volaby, the organisation lacked a single source of truth. By partnering with Report Simple, Orange Sky successfully consolidated their fragmented data sources into a robust Power BI environment. Today, Report Simple remains a trusted data partner, having empowered Orange Sky's internal team to expand their analytics capabilities and provide transparent, life-changing impact metrics to staff and donors.
Challenge
Prior to partnering with Report Simple, Orange Sky was hindered by a highly fragmented data landscape.
Disjointed Systems: Crucial impact data was scattered across legacy Excel spreadsheets, an outdated Portal database, and their proprietary Volaby system.
Eroded Trust: Without a single source of truth or a reliable reporting environment, staff confidence in data accuracy had severely diminished.
Complex Migrations: The organisation was actively phasing out older portals to consolidate into Volaby, adding complexity to historical data preservation.
Stakeholder Visibility: They struggled to provide donors and internal teams with clear, immediate metrics regarding their core services - washes, showers, and conversation hours.
Solution
Report Simple stepped in as a trusted data partner to architect a resilient and scalable Power BI ecosystem:
Centralised Data Modelling: Engineered a unified data model that seamlessly integrated historical Excel data, the legacy Portal, and live feeds from Volaby across Australia and New Zealand.
Targeted Impact Reporting: Developed interactive Power BI dashboards focused directly on tracking the organisation's primary metrics: washes, showers, and conversation hours.
Future-Proofing & System Upgrades: When Orange Sky migrated from Volaby to Rosterfy, Report Simple seamlessly integrated the new platform, building "Data Model 2.0", which now unifies four distinct operational data sources.
Empowering the Team: Conducted comprehensive end-user training for over 30 staff members, alongside continuous 1:1 support and mentoring for their internal data team.
Result
The deployment of this unified Power BI environment fundamentally shifted Orange Sky's relationship with their data:
Restored Confidence: With a single, reliable source of truth, employees and donors now have absolute trust in the reported impact metrics spanning the charity's entire history.
Exponential Internal Growth: Empowered by Report Simple's ongoing training, Orange Sky’s internal data team has flourished, independently deploying 14 new reports across their Power BI app to cover finance and marketing.
Operational Agility: The robust data architecture easily absorbed major operational shifts, ensuring zero loss of reporting continuity during the complex transition to Rosterfy.
Conclusion
By joining forces with Report Simple, Orange Sky successfully transformed a fragmented array of legacy systems into a sophisticated, unified data powerhouse. The introduction of scalable Power BI models and comprehensive staff training not only restored trust in their core metrics but also empowered their internal team to take the reins of their own data analytics. Ultimately, this partnership ensures that Orange Sky can clearly and confidently showcase their incredible, life-changing impact to the world while operating with newfound efficiency.
Working with Report Simple has completely transformed how we view and trust our data. They took our fragmented historical systems and turned them into a single, reliable Power BI environment. Not only can we clearly demonstrate our impact to our donors, but the ongoing training they provided has empowered our internal team to build and manage our own reports. They have been an invaluable partner in our mission.
Catherine Turnbull | Data, Insights & Finance Manager