Business Intelligence Reporting with SSRS & Power BI
Bespoke Reporting and Business Intelligence
Introduction
Leightons is an independent hearing and optical care provider committed to delivering specialist patient care throughout every stage of life. Combining personalised service with advanced diagnostic and testing methods, Leightons operates clinics across the UK and places strong emphasis on both clinical excellence and operational efficiency.
With multiple locations generating large volumes of sales and performance data, Leightons required a reliable reporting solution that could transform raw information into meaningful business insight. As reporting requirements evolved, the organisation sought a scalable platform capable of supporting automated reporting, branch-level analysis, and real-time business intelligence.
Challenges
Leightons required a reporting system that would allow management teams to review sales and commission figures for individual clinics across the country using the data already stored within their existing systems.
Initially, the requirement focused on generating monthly reports that could provide accurate clinic-level visibility into sales performance and commission calculations. However, as reporting became increasingly central to operational decision-making, the scope expanded significantly.
The business needed a solution capable of automatically generating reports every month for every clinic nationwide, removing the administrative burden of manual reporting while ensuring consistency and reliability. Reports also needed to be exported in both PDF and CSV formats to support different business processes and data-sharing requirements.
As the project progressed, Leightons identified an additional need to strengthen and expand its Power BI reporting environment. Existing reporting capabilities required further development to provide richer visual dashboards, more sophisticated calculations, and improved access to performance metrics across the organisation.
Our Solution
Leightons’ clinic sales data was managed through Sycle, an audiology practice management platform already embedded within the organisation’s operational processes. A data import workflow was already in place to transfer raw sales information from Sycle into a SQL database, creating a strong foundation for reporting development.
Given the requirement to generate structured operational reports from SQL data, Dolphin IT Solutions and Leightons agreed on SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as the primary reporting platform.
The first stage of the project focused on designing and developing reports within the SSRS web portal. This provided authorised administrative users with secure access to clinic-specific reports, allowing them to review sales and commission data for selected branches and reporting periods directly through a browser-based interface.
While this delivered immediate value, growing operational requirements soon highlighted the need for automation.
To address this, Dolphin IT Solutions developed a custom .NET Framework console application that integrated directly with the SSRS server. This application automated report generation by programmatically producing monthly reports for every clinic without manual intervention.
Reports were generated in both PDF and CSV formats to meet different operational requirements. PDF reports supported formal review and distribution, while CSV exports provided structured data that could be used elsewhere within the organisation. The CSV files became a key component of Leightons’ clinic-facing web portal, allowing branches to securely access and review their own monthly performance figures.
Power BI Reporting Expansion
Following the successful delivery of the SSRS reporting solution, Leightons engaged Dolphin IT Solutions again to enhance its internal Power BI reporting capabilities.
This phase focused on delivering separate, interactive business intelligence dashboards that complemented rather than replaced the operational SSRS reports.
To support this, Dolphin IT Solutions modified the organisation’s overnight ETL processes to push data into a dedicated Power BI SQL warehouse. Using the Power BI Gateway, dashboards could then surface near real-time information within Microsoft 365, providing management teams with more accessible and visually engaging reporting.
The Power BI solution incorporated a range of advanced reporting features and bespoke calculations designed around Leightons’ operational requirements. These included:
- Week-to-date performance tachometers with complex calculation logic
- Top-performing branch and sales ranking dashboards
- Daily sales performance dials measured against defined targets
- Interactive reporting dashboards within Microsoft 365
- Automated data refresh through Power BI Gateway integration
These dashboards gave decision-makers clearer visibility into organisational performance and supported faster, more informed business decisions.
Results
The completed solution delivered Leightons a scalable reporting ecosystem that combined automated operational reporting with modern business intelligence capabilities.
Through SSRS automation and custom .NET development, the business eliminated time-consuming manual reporting processes while ensuring every clinic received accurate monthly reporting in the required formats.
The subsequent expansion of Power BI reporting provided richer analytics, interactive dashboards, and up-to-date performance monitoring across the organisation. Together, these solutions gave Leightons improved visibility over sales, commissions, and branch performance while creating a reporting framework capable of supporting future operational growth.
