AMI Expeditionary Healthcare is an award-winning, physician-owned healthcare support company headquartered in Virginia that delivers tailored healthcare solutions and services to governments, humanitarian organizations, and private companies worldwide.
AMI had been seeking a cost-effective and efficient way to analyze financial data from Sage Intacct. It had previously relied on Prophix, a complex financial planning and accounting (FP&A) software with features that were much more comprehensive than the healthcare company could ever use—at the cost of $65,000 per year. When the subscription ended, it sought a solution that could provide the real-time financial insights it needed without unnecessary features. Vlad Obukhanich, Financial Analyst for AMI, was spending all his time exporting spreadsheets, rearranging them into reports, and sending them out every week—with no one even reading them. For the doctors and clinical nurses at AMI who needed insights into their spending and investments, financial analysis wasn’t their first language. Vlad knew he needed a better way to communicate key financial insights to the rest of the business.
"I was spending all my time every week, every month, downloading Excel files and manually creating and sending out reports. Now, I can focus on building automations and better processes that people will actually use."
– Vlad Obukhanich, Financial Analyst, AMI Expeditionary Healthcare
The challenge: Powering Power BI with the right live data from Sage
Vlad already knew AMI wanted to move to Power BI to provide easily consumable reports to key stakeholders. Power BI was already included with their Microsoft subscription, and anyone in the company could easily understand the reports. His key roadblock was finding a good way to integrate financial data, like account and general ledgers, from Sage Intacct into Power BI. The existing process relied on manual data exports, leading to delays, inefficiencies, and potential errors in financial planning. For AMI, those delays in purchasing and budgeting translated to real impact on health outcomes and life-saving procedures. Vlad needed to find a seamless, automated solution to ensure real-time access to accurate financial data for better forecasting and decision-making.
The solution: Seamless self-serve data connection to Power BI
Instead of renewing their costly FP&A subscription with more features than they needed, AMI solved the integration challenge with CData Connect Cloud to connect live Sage Intacct data directly to Power BI. This provided seamless, live data access without the need for additional data replication or manual exports. By leveraging CData, Vlad could build better, real-time financial dashboards, empowering leadership and other stakeholders with up-to-date insights for better decision-making—trusting the data in Power BI was accurate and current.
"People were too overwhelmed with the interface and layouts of our reports, like project managers, doctors, clinical leads, so it defeated the purpose... Reports in Power BI are much more digestible and user-friendly, and CData gives everyone the peace of mind that the data I’m looking at is up to date."
– Vlad Obukhanich, Financial Analyst, AMI Expeditionary Healthcare
The outcome: Empowering decisions that save lives with data
Making data fit into Power BI required some light cleanup and preparation, which Connect Cloud made easy for Vlad, empowering him to build the data schema he needed to enable rich drilldown in Power BI for different time frames, departments, and other filters.
With CData Connect Cloud, AMI achieved a direct, live connection from Sage Intacct to Power BI that Vlad could build and manage himself, automating the entire process of moving data in a timely fashion. This allowed the company to drop its existing FP&A platform with more features than was needed and save the $65K annual fee on more important things. Now, the reporting process is streamlined, delivering key insights into spending that stakeholders on the ground would need at a moment's notice. Finally, their reports are now beautiful and human-readable—powered by complete, live data.
Increase data agility and connect finance data with Connect Cloud
CData Connect Cloud lets Vlad enjoy an agile and cost-effective solution for financial data analysis. The real-time insights allow decision-makers on the front lines to make informed choices that affect patients quickly, and the seamless integration with Power BI ensures ongoing operational efficiency and growth. Leaders across the organization can now leverage these live, easily understandable reports and dashboards to guide their decisions, delivering greater health outcomes across projects to patients in need.
