Successful implementation of BI upgrade at Farsons

The success of the project was the result of an excellent collaboration between Megabyte’s and Farsons’ IT teams together with the constant support Megabyte provided throughout the transformation journey

Farsons launched Malta’s first locally-brewed beer back in 1928, marking Malta’s industrialisation and entry into the world of consumer brands. Their strong belief that innovation drives growth and success whilst also maintaining their roots, heritage and entrepreneurial spirit, has enabled the company to go from strength to strength.

Back in 2008, Farsons commissioned Megabyte to develop a centralized Business Intelligence Solution. At the time, various divisions of the business were using different IT systems and databases, therefore a central reporting solution linking all the systems was required. Megabyte implemented Oracle Business Intelligence and a data warehouse solution which gathered all the data into one central repository. This data was then used for Business Intelligence analytics and reporting, enabling them to benefit from rich visualisation, interactive dashboards and actionable analytics.

Over the years, their business operations showed constant growth and the flexibility of Oracle’s BI technology allowed for the necessary changes. However the infrastructure too had to keep up with the changes in growing demands for processing power, security demands and compliance, so a migration to the latest technology was essential. Megabyte was once again commissioned to upgrade both the software and hardware to the latest technology.

The project kicked off during the second half of 2019 with the installation of new hardware followed by the implementation of BI and data warehouse management software which led to the software being upgraded to the latest version. Data migration involved both moving the data and also data transformation processes during which some of the processes had to be re-engineered and altered in order to fit the new demands.

The first crucial phase of this project was successfully completed in January 2020, and this included both technical and enduser training so as to ensure that the new version of the system can be utilised to its full capacity.

The success of the project was the result of an excellent collaboration between Megabyte’s and Farsons’ IT teams together with the constant support Megabyte provided throughout the transformation journey. Also highly pivotal to this success was the collaboration of the end users, who undertook the challenge of testing and verifying the new version of the system and also becoming pillars of its adoption by the rest of the company. Megabyte and Farsons are now looking forward to the same success for the forthcoming second phase of this project.

“This has been one of the most successful projects involving an external supplier” remarked Mario Falzon, IT Manager at Farsons, who also emphasized that the effective cooperation between the two teams was exceptional and key to the successful outcome of this important phase of the project. Philip Farrugia, Head of IT and Business Services at Farsons noted that “Megabyte proved to be a reliable and professional partner throughout this critical phase of the project. We now look forward to continuing working with their team on this important project while further enhancing and strengthening our collaboration in this respect.”