Major logistics company unlocks enterprise-wide analytics with Power BI Connector for Jira

We spoke with a major European logistics provider who uses Jira and Jira Service Management (JSM) to manage thousands of requests across HR, IT operations, and service teams – and how a single integration transformed their analytics.

They asked to remain anonymous – so we’ll call them Inter Express. 

What is important is the real story of when their reporting needs grew more complex than they could handle – and the native Jira dashboards they relied on when the team was smaller could no longer keep up. 

Tempo’s Power BI Connector for Jira delivered the breakthrough: Automated, reliable, and secure access to complete Jira data, including custom fields, history, SLAs, and assets, all modeled directly inside Power BI. 

We spoke with Pat Ostmann, who leads two IT teams at Inter Express, about the impact Power BI Connector made on his employees and the wider organization.

Long story short? They got advanced analytics that transform portfolio visibility in a complex environment – in a single integration and all without manual work or data gaps. 

The full story is below.

Missing package: Limited visibility in native Jira

Native reporting in Jira was reaching its limits for the teams at Inter Express – particularly for the IT and HR departments.

"We couldn't get the data we needed from Jira Service Management, which meant the team couldn’t run a number of important reports," explains Ostmann. "We have some out-of-the-box solutions in Jira to see data, but you can't see it the way you want to see it and make the measurements that you want." 

The limitations were particularly acute for SLA tracking. Jira's native SLA calculations didn't align with how Inter Express needed to measure and report on service performance. This gap between available data and actionable insights was preventing teams from making informed decisions.

On-time insights

Inter Express already used Microsoft Power BI broadly across the organization for business intelligence and data visualization. The natural solution Ostmann found was connecting Jira data to Power BI, where teams could visualize information according to their specific needs.

What Power BI Connector for Jira does:

• Pulls comprehensive ticket data including history, status changes, owner group transitions, and categories

• Accesses assets data to segment analysis by employee types and organizational structure

• Calculates SLAs using custom business logic rather than Jira's default methods

• Creates unified dashboards combining Jira data with other organizational data sources

“Now the team has the Jira data they need, in the reporting tool they use, and the integration has been seamless.” 

Pat Ostmann, Solution Area Manager, Inter Express

Setup was smooth, and the result was a robust data pipeline that refreshes daily and serves multiple departments.

The results: Data-driven decision making at scale

Today, Inter Express uses Power BI Connector across both HR and IT operations, tracking everything from HR service requests to incidents, problems, and change management.

The impact is clear: Teams now have access to the granular data they need, visualized in ways that drive action.

"I think it made a huge difference for us to see it in Power BI instead and to be able to customize it as we want it to be." 

Dele Verfast, Personnel Administrator, Inter Express.

For the IT operations team at Inter Express, the connector solved a fundamental problem. As Noah Lott, who works in operations and creates front-end reports, explains: "The good thing with a BI tool is to visualize the data and extract insights. It is so easy now to visualize our data.” 

Perhaps most importantly, the solution scales across the enterprise. Teams share dashboards through Power BI Service, with access provisioned by department. This approach gives leadership visibility into service performance while empowering individual teams to dig into the data they need.

Beyond solving extraction challenges, the connector introduced powerful enterprise capabilities, including:

Automated, scheduled refreshes

Data is pulled daily, eliminating manual exports and ensuring teams always see current insights.

Access to 100% of Jira data

Enables complete, trustable reporting with no data blind spots, supports cross-team visibility and executive-level analysis – far beyond what native Jira reports provide.

High-performance extraction built for large datasets

The connector is optimized for reliability at scale, ensuring Inter Express can query and transform high volumes of tickets across multiple ITSM processes without performance degradation.

Portfolio-level insights

Supports portfolio-level insights, allowing teams to combine datasets across incidents, problems, changes, and service management processes without stitching reports together manually.

Enterprise-grade governance and data controls

Role-based access, secure token handling, and compliance-ready pipelines ensure safe handling of sensitive HR and operational data.

Looking forward

For Ostmann, the recommendation is straightforward: "If you’re on a similar setup and want to extract more data – especially if you’re using Microsoft tools – then yes, I would recommend it. It allows you to work with the data in a more granular way.”

The Power BI Connector for Jira transformed the approach of Inter Express to service management analytics, turning limited native reporting into a flexible, enterprise-ready business intelligence solution.

Thanks to a single integration, Intercontinental Express now operates with a trusted analytic foundation that meets enterprise demands for visibility, accuracy, performance, and governance.