OAG Improved Reporting with Tableau
to Microsoft Power BI Mig
Client Overview
Official Aviation Guide (OAG) is a UK-based industry-leading travel data platform that’s been powering aviation intelligence since 1929. With nearly a century of experience, they deliver supply, demand, and pricing datasets via cloud-based APIs and analytics tools. OAG supports the global travel ecosystem by providing insights into flight schedules, status, connections, and historical performance, enabling more informed decision-making across airlines, airports, consultancies, finance, travel technology, and government agencies. Their offerings include nearly real-time data, analytics like the OAG Analyser suite, alerts, and comprehensive historical archives. Operating globally, from the UK headquarters to offices in the USA, Asia, and Lithuania, OAG powers billions of travel decisions each day through its rich, trusted data infrastructure.
Business Objective
The primary objective of the OAG is to migrate all existing reports and dashboards from Tableau to Microsoft Power BI. While migrating, they wanted to keep Snowflake as the central data source. The intent to migrate away from Tableau was to achieve seamless integration with other Microsoft products like Teams, Azure, and Excel, improve dashboard rendering speed, and reduce licensing costs.
Industry
Travel
Platform
Azure
Service
Tableu to Power BI Migration
Challenges
Snowflake Performance Issues
Slow rendering of dashboards built on a large Snowflake dataset.
Weak Microsoft Integration
Tableau’s native integration with other Microsoft products, such as Teams and Excel, is weak.
High Scaling Costs
High licensing and maintenance costs during scaling.
Complex User Experience
Users found Tableau less intuitive and more challenging to use.
Limited Report Customization
Tailoring reports for specific departments or user rules requires development efforts.
Inconsistent Cross-Platform
Tableau has different user responses across web, desktop, and mobile platforms.
Solutions
End-to-End Report Migration
We first carefully analyzed the existing Tableau dashboard of OAG to understand their KPIs, calculations, and data relationships. We built the reports in Microsoft Power BI, enhancing usability and functionality wherever possible without disrupting the existing workflow. This approach preserved reporting continuity and avoided any disruption to business or users.
Snowflake Integration & Data Modeling
Since OAG wanted to continue using Snowflake as the primary data source, we built the entire transformation logic within Snowflake itself. This allowed Power BI to connect seamlessly, whether through Direct Query or Import mode, while ensuring that any future logic changes in Snowflake automatically flowed into the reports without requiring modifications in Power BI.
Performance Optimization
To address the performance bottlenecks of Tableau dashboards, we tuned queries and streamlined data logic. This approach of our Microsoft Power BI experts ensured faster rendering, quicker refresh cycles, and more responsive dashboards, even while working with large Snowflake datasets.
User Experience Enhancements
Recognizing that user adoption was low in Tableau, we designed interactive and role-based dashboards in Power BI. Features like drill-throughs, slicers, and dynamic visuals made the reports more intuitive and tailored to each department’s needs, significantly improving self-service capabilities.
Validation & UAT Support
To ensure the efficiency of the new reporting system, our team ran a detailed reconciliation between Tableau and Power BI outputs. This approach helped us ensure that the metrics are the same across both platforms. We also supported User Acceptance Testing (UAT), taking feedback from stakeholders to implement refinements.
Documentation & Knowledge Transfer
To ensure the OAG team can keep using the Microsoft Power BI efficiently, we created comprehensive documentation for each report covering data models, logic, and refresh processes.
Advanced Snowflake Data Engineering
Designed and deployed modular Snowflake views such as Product Configuration by Account, Not/Assigned Accounts, and Monthly Accounts to standardize reporting structures and improve reusability across dashboards.
Tableau Cloud Architecture
Conducted a detailed analysis of Tableau Cloud reports, including XML/JSON metadata extraction and Okta-OAG integration validation, to accurately replicate fields, calculations, and access permissions in Microsoft Power BI.
Results
Zero-Downtime Migration
All 66 Tableau reports were successfully recreated in Microsoft Power BI without business disruption, ensuring continuous access to critical insights throughout the transition.
Faster Performance
Optimized dashboards and reports significantly improved load times, delivering near real-time analytics and enhancing decision-making speed across business teams.
75% Cost Reduction
The migration reduced licensing and infrastructure costs by 75%, while decreasing reliance on central BI teams and improving overall operational efficiency.
Self-Service BI Environment
Microsoft Power BI was designed to scale with future reporting needs and new data sources, empowering OAG business teams to independently create and customize reports, accelerating insight generation.
Technology Stack
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