Webjet takes flight with a Master Data Management solution

Webjet Group is a Global Travel Organisation that enables customers to travel the world through market leading brands supported by innovative technology. In FY23 alone, the award winning global travel business processed over 7.4 million bookings including flight, hotel, holiday, insurance and car hire deals. Its Webbeds business processed $2.8bn in TTV. Webjet is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

Lost in the layover: Webjet’s fragmented data challenge

Webjet had a data warehouse with a number of interfaces from different ERPs. As they acquired companies and new ERPs were added, each ERP had its own chart of accounts which mapped into a global chart of accounts in the data warehouse.

Previously, it was managed in several manually maintained tables in SQL. This meant each ERP had its own table, and they had to do data conversions to maintain those structures.

Some conversions were done in code when moving ERPs into the data warehouse. This process could be tedious as any code updates required rounds of testing, approvals and disruptions.

There were multiple sources, no central location for master data, and people had to rely on someone with SQL abilities to maintain those tables and mappings. There was also no structured approach to maintain the data.

What Webjet wanted was:

• A single source of truth: to standardise GLs and company codes into a common chart of accounts which could be consolidated for global reporting
• To remove reliance on specific SQL skill sets
• To introduce audit capabilities
• A more streamlined and user friendly reporting capability

Clearing the runway for a unified data solution

When Rocco Bagnato joined Webjet as Group Systems Manager – Finance, he saw these challenges and set out to change things. He had used Profisee previously and knew it had the capability to address Webjet’s problems.

Together with the finance team, and endorsement from IT, he set out to transform how data was managed, enlisting the help of QMetrix as their implementation partner.

The first step was to rebuild the data warehouse and embed Profisee as the central master data capability within the system.

Profisee is a Master Data Management tool that cleans and unifies data to provide a single source of truth.

Webjet’s primary use of Profisee for this project was as a reference data maintenance tool. The goal was to simplify the end-to-end process from ERP all the way to Business Intelligence (BI) reporting platforms.

They took out mapping tables from data warehouses and put it in Profisee.

Rocco says, “Now, when converting data from an ERP to a BI platform, instead of looking at 6 tables, everything is on one central repository in Profisee. This has made maintaining conversions easier, and data reconciles correctly”.

The finance team and wider reporting user-base can see how their chart of accounts map into the global accounts structure, and can trace the data through from their ERP right through to the reporting platform. The whole data movement is also much smoother and cleaner now.

Maintaining data quality with data governance

Profisee also helps with data governance: Charts in Profisee are compared with those in SAP, Dynamics 365, Great Plains, Xero, Infor and other systems Webjet uses. If there are variations, Profisee provides a validation or exception report so the team can investigate.

The tool gives Webjet the ability to maintain a consistent data structure in a proactive manner.

Furthermore, when a new account is created, Profisee kicks off a workflow to get approvals. The reference data is also easily maintained from a web front-end, accessed via a URL and logins.

Profisee also provides data validation whereby you can set up data quality rules.

For example, if a GL account starts with a certain four digits, it gets grouped into a particular category such as expenses or revenue. These rules ensure new accounts are categorised correctly and automatically.

Saving time, effort, problems – and frustration

Back in the day, if a new account was coming from the ERP, you had to make the change, see that it went through correctly, and if not, find another table that potentially had that mapping or transition and fix the issue. A single change could take a few hours.

Now with Profisee, this takes mere minutes.

You don’t need to traverse multiple ETL tables to search for things – everything is in one place. Since mappings occur automatically, time is saved and no problem-solving is needed.

The process is straightforward, and people are able to trust the system and just get the job done.

A user-friendly interface and auditability

In the past when a change was needed, Webjet had to rely on the rare few who had SQL skills or engage external consultants.

While there was a reference spreadsheet, the team would sometimes copy it, make adjustments and load it back on – while someone else did the same thing, resulting in overwrites of changes.

Now, mapping tables have been taken out from data warehouses and put into Profisee which has a web front-end built onto it so anyone can use it.

This has created less reliance on a certain person or skill set to maintain mapping and reference data, and made it easier for authorised end users like finance administrators to make changes to accounts.

Because there is auditability now, any change is tracked. If a change needs to be reversed, it can be easily done.

From an audit point of view, it is also easier for auditors to track the data. They can look at the data on the BI platform, and track it back to the ERP source.

Simplifying reports and getting better insights

If Webjet needs a new report, with Profisee they can simply add an additional attribute and build a report from that. Filtering and producing information is also easier.

Within Profisee, fields are categorised. To report on revenue, you just need to select the revenue category, as opposed to having to select each individual account related to revenue – with the chance of forgetting one or missing out on a new account.

Full visibility from takeoff to touchdown

All reporting draws from the same dataset, and month-end and year-end reporting has now been simplified for the business.

With Webjet moving to a cloud environment, the selection of Profisee SaaS made sense, and means that systems maintenance and upgrades are far easier. There is also ready access to new capabilities as they come online.

Webjet also intends to eventually expand the use of Profisee across the organisation beyond finance to other departments, some of whom have their own databases or master data tools – so everything can be unified.

Because they are a global company, having it as a SaaS product makes it more accessible to other parts of the world. There is also no need to factor in considerations that come with an on-premise solution such as access and firewalls.

Impact for Webjet

• A single source of truth: All finance master data is on one platform – and easily consolidated for global reporting
• Data flows from ERPs to BI reporting tools are streamlined
• A user-friendly platform that finance team members can use and update daily, rather than being reliant on SQL skilled team members only
• Auditability and traceability of data and workflows as data lineage is available
• A SaaS solution that offers scalability to cater for expansion plans
• Strong data governance to continue maintaining the system and data