“We had a heck of a hill to climb if we were to get our Business Objects implementation delivering the reports and information that were so crucial to our department. We had no internal expertise and relied heavily on CONTEMPORARY. They were proactive in providing training and knowledge transfer and have made a very real difference to the ways in which we now utilise Business Objects across the Council. ”
Winchester City Council is one of 11 district councils in Hampshire, covering an area of 250 square miles and serving a population of approximately 110,000 residents. A designated heritage city, Winchester attracts an estimated four million visitors each year.
Several years ago, two departments within Winchester City Council – Revenues & Benefits and Housing – adopted Business Objects as their standardised departmental information reporting and data analysis tool. At that time, the Council had in-house Business Objects expertise but over time these ‘Super Users’ moved on to other positions outside the Council, leaving these departments with no real access to the high level, specialist technical knowledge that Business Objects platform needed.
Both departments relied upon Business Objects to generate reports, used by departmental staff and managers to review detailed information on various cases and initiatives as well as providing up-to-the-minute snapshots of the departments’ overall progress and identify areas that needed additional resources.
A wide range of reporting templates had been developed by the ‘Super Users’ but with their departure, the complexity of Business Objects meant that departmental staff no longer had access to the expertise needed to create and run new reports. The subsequent pressures added to the already over-stretched resources of the Council’s IT department which recognised the immense value that Business Objects could bring to the Council but which also lacked the technical knowledge to develop and run the required reports and maintain the system..
“We were satisfied that we had made the right decision to adopt Business Objects as the reporting and data analysis tool for these two departments,” explained Peter Byrne, Project Manager at Winchester City Council. “Indeed, we suspected that we could roll out Business Objects to all of our other departments over time, ending up with a single, cross-Council solution that would deliver economies of scale, improve our efficiencies, reduce the burden on our IT department and allow us to deliver the information that was needed where it was needed and when it was needed.”
However before such an ambitious policy could be implemented, Winchester City Council had to substantially improve its internal knowledge of Business Objects and implement policies and procedures to ensure a streamlined delivery of accurate information.
Industry:
Local Authority
Business Plan:
To completely update an existing and earlier version of Business Objects and ensure that departments had the capabilities to build and execute reports so that information could be delivered to the people who needed it when they needed it.
The Result:
The latest version of Business Objects is being rolled out across all Council Departments as the core reporting tool. Training and knowledge transfer ensures that designated users are now able to complete and run reports for each department, and that the IT department is able to maintain and enhance Business Objects. Scheduled reporting allows standardised reports to run and emailed to recipients on a regular weekly basis, helping staff become more efficient and effective.
Products:
SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.0.
"CONTEMPORARY’s consultants are there whenever we need them. Their entire approach to this project has been exemplary and they are now working with us to establish a single reporting tool across the Council. Business Objects is our core reporting solution but without CONTEMPORARY we would probably still be struggling to create and run reports to get accurate and up-to-date information to our staff when they need it."
Peter Byrne
Winchester City Council