The document describes a social housing business intelligence solution developed by InfoAxon for a leading social housing service provider in the UK. The solution included creating a data warehouse to store data from the client's Choice Based Letting system and developing a web-based business intelligence platform. This allowed users to generate parameterized reports, dashboards, and analyze data through OLAP cubes to help meet reporting needs and support business decisions. InfoAxon developed the solution using open source technologies like Pentaho and PostgreSQL to provide a cost-effective and customizable solution.

1. Case Study
Social Housing Business Intelligence
Solution
Client – A leading Social Housing Service
Provider
Marketing Contacts:
Client – A leading Social Vineet Dahiya
InfoAxon Technologies Ltd.
Housing Service Provider Mob - +91-9810425760
Email - vineet.dahiya@infoaxon.com

2. Overview
Choice Based Letting (CBL) is a nationwide initiative by U.K government to make allocation of social housing to home-seekers more
transparent, and to give home-seekers more choices in the selection of housing properties.
The UK Government‟s 5 year housing plan, Sustainable Communities: Homes for All, published in January 2005, set out plans
for taking forward its CBL policy. Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), UK monitors its progress and has set
the target of 100% of English local authorities to adopt CBL by 2010.
The client is a service provider of Choice Based Letting (CBL) service to citizens by advertising and letting social housing properties
offered by its Local Authority Partners and Housing Associations in UK. It provides managed and hosted choice-based lettings
directly to a two-third of London boroughs, Birmingham Council and 25+ housing associations through channels like web, IVR,
SMS, Digital TV (DigiTV) & Virtual tours.
InfoAxon designed a robust, web based data warehouse/Business Intelligence solution to help “the clients” meet all housing
associations‟ and councils‟ demand for reporting, ad-hoc querying, and data analysis capabilities
Business Needs and Challenges
Though the CBL system had highly flexible, extensible, and dynamic characteristics, it scored very low when it came to fulfill the
following requirements of the users:
Reporting: The system lacked extensive capability of generating useful reports that could help the clients and their partners
support business requirements and take informed business decisions.
Though it provided some in built reports, the report generation process had an adverse impact on the performance of the CBL
application, making it very slow. Moreover, these reports did not have professional look and feel and were not user friendly as they
did not allow basic actions like filtering, sorting by users on them. And of course, they were not based on parameters selected by
users.
Data Analysis: The system also did not provide users with data handy and in a format that allowed them to drill through it fast,
track the trend, and draw several useful inferences which could support their business decisions.
The growing volume of property related data and the necessity of using those data for supporting various business requirements
and decisions by the client and their partners (housing associations and councils) generated the following needs to be addressed.
 A highly robust, scalable, flexible, and user-friendly system that can help support business requirements, enhance
better decision making capabilities, and provide better control over the various operations.
 An apt data repository in place which can be used for quick reporting, ad-hoc querying, and data analytics by the
client and its partners.
 A user friendly system that allows users to generate various useful, impressive and eye-catching reports based on
different criteria.
 To speed up the performance of native CBL application by freeing it from the duty of generating some inherited
reports

3. Case Study
Following challenges were associated with business needs:
 Designing a centralized data warehouse which must be equally responsive and evolutionary with the
dynamic behaviour of CBL system. With the increase in its customer base and their varying needs, CBL system is
highly flexible, extensible, and dynamic.
 Building a web-based system, which is securely accessible to all the partners according to their authorization
and have business intelligence features for generating a number of interesting reports, making ad-hoc queries,
and performing data analysis.
 Ensuring the data warehouse supplies the single version of high quality information to be used by specific
business intelligence tools.
To meet these business needs and challenges, InfoAxon proposed and designed a highly reliable and resilient solution using latest
open source technologies.
Why InfoAxon?
InfoAxon was chosen for several reasons to implement the beneficiaries‟ solution:
 Our 8 year track record in helping with business Intelligence solutions for the development sector was ideally placed to help
achieve CBL System objectives.
 Use of existing pre-packaged open source business intelligence platform technologies that are available as
readymade white label platform that enabled rapid implementation of the BI environment for the CBL system.
 Expertise in Open source integration to creative innovative solutions to similar problems by leveraging the power of
open source and business intelligence tools.
 Ability to put together a multi-disciplined development team comprising of development experts and technology gurus.
How InfoAxon achieved it?
InfoAxon had a very clear understanding of requirements when preparing a strategy to design and deliver a solution that could
enhance CBL system with additional features that the client and its partners wanted to use. It followed an agile development
methodology to ensure a timely and cost-effective development of a solution that comprised of a web-based data warehouse and
business intelligence tools.
The solution delivery process included two major steps:
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4. Case Study
Creating and Populating a
Data Warehouse
The key activity for this step was loading data from CBL
system‟s native database to new data warehouse in two
phases, initial load of old data till date and an ongoing
incremental load. InfoAxon ensured that data be loaded
only after they are properly cleansed, combined,
structured, and aggregated. For this, InfoAxon chose to
use the ETTL (Extract, Transport, Transform, and Load)
process on the data. The following visual depiction
illustrates how it all was carried out:
An Overview of Solution Delivery Process
Creating a Web-Based Business
Intelligence Platform
InfoAxon used its pre-tested, professional, and cost-effective BI
platform powered by open source to create a web-based
business intelligence solution for Social Housing. With a web
based solution, InfoAxon ensured accessibility of solution from
any geographic location.
Single sign-on support implemented through integration with
the Central Authentication Service (CAS) with third party
application (SSL) made the system further secure to login and
use. This platform contained the following functional features:
 Parameterized Reports
 Dashboard
 Parameterized OLAP cubes for data analysis
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5. Case Study
Dashboard, Report, and Analysis
features
This BI platform enabled users to generate several useful reports in
different formats (Web Page, PDF, EXCEL, CSV) and analyse the data
as and when required. Users can generate reports based on a
number of parameters such as bedroom size, property let, bid type
etc.
Report based on certain parameters
The Dashboard showing reports in form of colourful charts and
diagrams made it easy for the users to interpret the facts.
Dashboard showing graphical
representation of data
It allows users to drill through the information based on different
parameters by taking them to the OLAP cubes directly when they click on
any of the slices of the pie chart. Users can also go to the OLAP Cube
page by clicking “Analysis.”
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6. Case Study
Detailed OLAP Cube analysis
Technology Stack
The table below lists the components of technology stack used for developing the solution.
OSS Components Details
Presentation JSP
BI Platform Pentaho BI suite ( Community Edition)
Application Server JBoss 4.3 Enterprise Edition
Database PostgreSQL 8.2
Operating System Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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7. Case Study
What InfoAxon delivered?
With its expertise in using open source technology and flawless approach to address the core needs of the client accurately,
InfoAxon produced a solution that boasts of following capabilities:
 A centralized repository storing data in dimensional form and is readily available for reporting, querying, and analysis.
 It enhanced its users‟ capability to make better business decisions.
 The solution can be easily customized on demand of any new requirement made by the client‟s partners and customers.
 A solution well adapted to the dynamic behaviour of CBL system.
 It being developed using open-source technology and components was very cost-effective and provided cost edge benefits.
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8. Case Study
Our Customer Showcase
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9. About InfoAxon Technologies
InfoAxon is a leading provider of enterprise services and business
solutions powered by open source. We design, architect and support
complete “Enterprise Solution Platforms” using Open Standards, Web 2.0
next generation technologies and Open Source Frameworks providing
end-to-end solutions to business problems.
India‟s First Global Open Source Integration Company
We are India's First Global Open Source Integration Company providing
business solutions in areas of Content & Knowledge Management,
Web2.0 Collaboration and Business Intelligence powered by our
unique open source „Platforming‟ expertise.
INDIA OFFICE: UK OFFICE:
InfoAxon Technologies Ltd. InfoAxon Technologies UK Ltd.
H-189, Sector-63, Building A, Trinity Court,
Electronic City, Wokingham Road,
NODIA-201307, U.P Bracknell, Berkshire RG42 1PL,
India United Kingdom
Phone: +91 120 4798937 Phone: +44 1344 668000
Fax: + 91 120 4350065 Fax: +44 1344 668148
Website: www.infoaxon.com | Blog: http://blog.infoaxon.com | E-mail: contactus@infoaxon.com
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