Vision

Embark Schools runs its people operations on Dayforce. As the network grew, leadership needed more than what Dayforce's native reporting could offer — they needed structured, role-appropriate visibility into headcount, payroll spend, and workforce trends across every campus. Vurtuo was brought in to build it.

The Challenge

Dayforce holds the data, but extracting meaningful insight from it — consistently, at scale, without manual intervention — requires a reporting layer built for that purpose. For a multi-campus organization like Embark, the challenge was not just building dashboards. It was building a data model that could cleanly separate and compare metrics across schools, configure access so that each role saw only what was relevant to them, and ensure that reports stayed current without anyone manually pulling or refreshing data. The margin for error was real — stale data or misconfigured access in a reporting environment creates decisions made on bad information.

Our Approach

Vurtuo began by understanding how Embark's organization was structured — how campuses related to the broader network, which roles needed which data, and what decisions each audience was actually trying to make. That context shaped every design choice that followed. The data model was built to reflect Embark's org structure directly, so metrics could be compared at the campus level or rolled up to the network level without ambiguity. Dashboards were designed separately for executive and operational audiences — each surfacing the right level of detail for the decisions being made at that level. Direct integration with Dayforce data sources was configured to keep everything current automatically. The engagement closed with a fully connected reporting environment that required no manual maintenance.

Scope

Vurtuo delivered the full reporting implementation for Embark Schools: live Power BI integration with Dayforce data sources, executive dashboard suite covering headcount, payroll spend, and workforce trends, campus-level operational reports for site administrators, a structured multi-campus data model, automated refresh scheduling tied to Dayforce updates, and role-based access configuration across the organization.

What Made This Complex

Building a reporting layer on top of a live HCM system requires more than connecting a data source. The data model had to be structured to support two distinct reporting audiences — executives reviewing network-wide trends and campus administrators managing day-to-day staffing — without conflating those views or exposing data inappropriately across roles. Role-based access added another layer of configuration precision: each user needed to see exactly what was relevant to their level of the organization and nothing beyond that. And because the environment had to stay current without manual intervention, the refresh architecture had to be reliable enough to be invisible — running automatically in the background so that reports always reflected what Dayforce knew.

Technological Foundation

All reporting was built in Microsoft Power BI, connected directly to Embark's Dayforce environment as the live data source. The data model was structured within Power BI to reflect Embark's campus hierarchy — enabling both site-level detail and network-level aggregation from a single, consistent source of truth. Automated refresh scheduling was configured to pull updated data from Dayforce on a defined cadence, eliminating manual export workflows. Role-based access was implemented through Power BI's row-level security and workspace access controls, ensuring that report visibility aligned with each user's role in the organization.

Comprehensive Quality Requirements

Dashboard accuracy was validated against Dayforce source data at the field level before any reports were made available to users. The multi-campus data model was tested for correct aggregation behavior — confirming that campus-level metrics rolled up accurately to the network view and that cross-campus comparisons produced consistent, comparable results. Role-based access was tested across role types to confirm that access boundaries were enforced as configured. Automated refresh behavior was validated to confirm that report data stayed synchronized with Dayforce on schedule and that failures were surfaced rather than silently stale.

Enablement and Sustainable Skill Building

Embark's team was engaged throughout the build — not handed a finished product at the end. By launch, the administrators responsible for reporting understood how the data model was structured, how dashboards were organized, and how to interpret what they were seeing. Documentation was delivered covering the data model logic, dashboard layout and intended audience for each report, and refresh configuration. Training was conducted directly on the live environment, giving Embark's team the context to manage routine changes and onboard new users without external support.

Impact and Outlook

Embark Schools now has a live, role-appropriate reporting environment built directly on its Dayforce data. Executives have real-time visibility into headcount, payroll spend, and workforce trends across the network. Campus administrators have the operational detail they need to manage staffing and scheduling at the site level. Manual reporting has been eliminated — data refreshes automatically and reports reflect current information without anyone having to pull or prepare it. As Embark's network grows, the data model is structured to accommodate additional campuses without rebuilding what is already in place.