Enhancing Productivity, Accuracy, and User Experience with Athena GL Integration
In the healthcare industry, accurate booking of GL (General Ledger) entries for revenue generation, contractual adjustments, and bad debts is crucial for precise reporting and financial projections. One of our clients, a leading healthcare provider from North America, faced challenges in streamlining GL entry processes, which were manually managed through MS Excel. This led to frequent errors, confusion, and significant time wasted on manual calculations and data handling. To overcome these inefficiencies, our technical team developed an advanced integration solution using Azure Data Factory, Dataverse, Navision 2018, Athena, and Snowflakes. This streamlined the data fetching and accounting process, enhancing productivity and data accuracy.
The Challenge:
The client faced several key challenges with the existing manual process
- Manual Data Handling: Healthcare professionals relied on Excel for GL entry calculations, leading to errors and inconsistencies.
- Time-Consuming Processes: Significant non-value-added time was spent managing manual data entry and reconciliations.
- Risk of Inaccuracies: Manual updates increased the risk of accounting errors, which is critical from a financial reporting perspective.
- Lack of Real-Time Data Access: Data from multiple sources (Athena/Snowflakes) was not efficiently integrated, impacting timely decision-making.
Our Solution
To address these challenges, Wai Technologies designed and implemented an automated Athena GL Integration Application using the following technologies
- Azure Data Factory: Automated data fetching and transformation
- Dataverse: Storing and managing calculated fields
- Navision 2018: Accurate posting of GL data
- Athena & Snowflakes: Fetching raw data for computation
- Power BI: Real-time reporting and visualization
Key Features and Implementation Steps
- Data Fetching from Snowflakes: Created a script to replicate raw data from Snowflakes into a structured spreadsheet.
- Data Storage in Dataverse: Calculated fields were stored efficiently, ensuring consistency.
- Historical Data Calculation: Extracted historical data (1 year) from Snowflakes to compute trend-based calculations.
- Approval Workflow Initiation: Automated workflows via PowerApps and Power Automate to approve calculated datasets.
- Complex Field Calculations: Implemented logic for shared resources/providers to ensure accurate distribution.
- Final Data Push to Navision: After approval, accurate GL data was pushed to Navision 2018 through API integration using ADF (Azure Data Factory).
- Automated Reporting: Integrated Power BI for real-time GL data visualization and monthly reporting.
Impact & Results
The Athena GL Integration application delivered remarkable improvements in the client’s financial reporting and accuracy:
Conclusion:
By leveraging Azure Data Factory, Dataverse, Navision 2018, and Power Platform, we delivered an advanced, automated accounting solution tailored to the healthcare sector’s needs. This project underscores our commitment to human-centered, technology-enabled transformation in healthcare, enhancing both productivity and accuracy.Would you like to see more case studies or discuss how we can transform your accounting processes?