21 February 2024
VdA: Modernises dashboards and increases the clarity of management indicators
VdA: Modernises dashboards and increases the clarity of management indicators
Vieira de Almeida (VdA) and BI4ALL have collaborated on many initiatives for several years in a partnership relation that started with a project to integrate information into a reporting system developed to support the decision of the firm’s leadership. Recently, VdA reformulated business intelligence dashboards to improve readability and refine the user experience, adding and adjusting some management indicators.
The Company
VdA is an international reference firm with more than 40 years of experience, standing out for its excellence in providing highly specialised legal services in multiple industries and practices. With more than 450 employees, it is present, through VdA Legal Partners, in 7 jurisdictions, adding extensive sector coverage in all African countries of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and in Timor-Leste.
VdA has been consistently recognised for its services’ excellence and innovative character, having received the most prestigious international honours and awards in the corporate law industry.
The Challenge
Several years after the launch of the first version of the business intelligence dashboards, it was necessary to develop new layouts that would allow a more functional, integrated and appealing navigation and access experience to the relevant data and indicators by the end-users in a consultation that they need to carry out regularly, but not necessarily daily, explains the Technology Director, Rui Alves.
The previous format was already sold out. The information was structured in a very condensed way: “For those who consult the firm’s data and indicators daily, it is quite useful to view the consolidated information in a few layouts; however, for those who consult these dashboards on a less current basis, it is difficult to navigate and interpret as much information and extract what is necessary, making the experience sometimes overwhelming”, accentuates the Financial Director, Pedro Pinto Coelho.
On the other hand, “higher integration of data was crucial, allowing, at each moment, to extract updated information on the part of those who work on these indicators, using them as a base of work to prepare reports and other initiatives. Now users can understand more intuitively where they are and where they have to go,” explains the Business & Knowledge Director, Margarida Saragoça.
Matilde Horta e Costa, Corporate Affairs Director, adds that “it was crucial to develop a new design, aligning the dashboard environment with the institutional website, making it more appealing and communicating information about data in a more accessible way. Additionally, the fact that the firm has evolved in organic structure, with the reorganisation of the internal areas, made it necessary to adapt the tool profoundly”.
The Solution
To follow the project, VdA created a report group represented by three major areas: Finance, Talent and Business. “It was a multidisciplinary team that worked throughout the project in a very cohesive way. We started the process with a briefing on the objective to be achieved, taking the reformulation of the currently available dashboards as a starting point. From there, we agreed on the framework and started the construction and development process. I believe that we have created a very consensual, homogeneous and coherent product in terms of presentation and data quality”, started by explaining the Financial Director, Pedro Pinto Coelho.
This team, together with the BI4ALL team, and multidisciplinary, including graphic design, programming and analytical skills, collaborated over six months to achieve the final product.
Although, as the Technology Director, Rui Alves, points out, a significant part of the project was carried out in a confined environment, the truth is that the objectives were successfully achieved. This important tool was able to obtain enormous support from its users.
As for the future, Pedro Pinto Coelho, Finance Director, says that there is a component that was not covered by this project, and that is the office component of the international network, in addition to admitting that naturally, there are always improvements that can be made to optimise the use of the tool.
Testimonials
"It was a multidisciplinary team that worked throughout the project in a very cohesive way. We started the process with a briefing about the goal to be achieved, taking as a starting point the reformulation of the current dashboards available. From there we agreed on the framework and started the construction and development process. I believe we have created a very consensual, homogeneous and coherent product in terms of presentation and data quality."
Pedro Pinto Coelho
Finance Director
"BI4ALL was always very available to assist our requests. Because multiple times, we also do not know the impact of some adjustments and developments in the tool's operation, but I think it always worked very well."
Margarida Saragoça
Business and Knowledge Director
"The VdA team was organised in a multidisciplinary way, integrating elements that worked, namely, the data quality and the conceptualisation of the indicators, as well as the image and communication aspects, with concerns in terms of graphic design and layouts alignment with the brand VdA. The interaction with BI4ALL on these different fronts has always been very positive."
Matilde Horta e Costa
Corporate Affairs Director
"BI4ALL itself is part of the solution. It helped us a lot and was indeed a partner! It managed to add value in the development of a tool that is core for the firm, accompanying us in this process of digital transformation that we have been doing in recent years."
Rui Alves
Technology Director
