Myeloma UK Case Study

Data platform optimisation

About the organisation

Myeloma UK is the UK’s leading charity focused solely on myeloma, a type of blood cancer. It works to improve the lives of people affected by the disease by funding vital research into better diagnosis, treatments, and the development of new drugs. The charity provides extensive support to patients, families, and carers through free, reliable information, specialist nurse services, and support groups, helping people understand and manage their condition. Myeloma UK also campaigns to ensure fair and timely access to the best treatments across the UK, working closely with the NHS, policymakers, and decision-making bodies. In addition, it raises awareness of myeloma symptoms to encourage earlier diagnosis and educates healthcare professionals to improve standards of care. Overall, Myeloma UK aims to make myeloma easier to live with while working towards a future cure.

The challenge

Myeloma UK provide a helpline providing information and support, and it’s important to have accurate reporting on details of calls to ensure the right skillsets and levels of resourcing. The organisation was experiencing major issues with their reporting in Power BI, as they were hitting the limit of their capacity in Microsoft Fabric, causing reports to fail to refresh. They were working-around these issues by manually updating reports periodically, which were still taking several hours to update. They were considering increasing their Fabric capacity, which potentially would have increased costs by thousands of pounds each month, so selected Adapta, based on their experience around Power BI and Fabric, to review their environment and provide a long-term, scalable data management strategy.

Adapta support

An Adapta consultant undertook an initial review of the Myeloma UK dataset and reporting which identified opportunities to restructure the data model behind the Power BI reports to dramatically improve efficiency. Following this review and approval, the Adapta consultant then implemented the restructure of the data model and reporting which massively reduced the size of the model and the refresh time. This resolved the issue with the automatic refresh of the data model, avoided the need to increase Fabric capacity and its associated costs, and ensured the dataset could scale in the future.

Myeloma UK
Keith Scott
Head of Data Management, Myeloma UK

"Adapta quickly understood the challenges we were facing with our Power BI reporting and Microsoft Fabric environment. The restructuring work they carried out has improved the efficiency of our data model—dramatically reducing refresh times, resolving our refresh failures, and removing the need for costly increases in Fabric capacity. The project recommendations also highlighted some future learning and development areas for our internal data team which will allow us to futureproof our work further. We would recommend Adapta to any organisation looking to optimise their data infrastructure/platform."

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