Unlock the business value of your information - public sector business intelligence survey
Jinfo Blog

By Sarah Dillingham

Abstract

Microsoft and The Register recently held a webinar to share the results of their latest survey on public sector business intelligence. The results turned few surprises with the exception of one very overlooked but critical business information tool.

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Microsoft and The Register recently held a webinar to share the results of their latest survey on public sector business intelligence. 

This practical discussion includes views from Tony Lock, Programme Director at Freeform Dynamics, Tom Zebedee, Head of Architecture at Ofsted and Chris Smyth, Business Intelligence Consultant at Parity Solutions.

The results turned few surprises with the exception of one very overlooked but critical business information tool.

Public sector organisations all face similar challenges around managing information to comply with statutory obligations including FoI requests, adapting business intelligence capabilities to the needs of the business and increasing the number of self-service business intelligence tools.

The primary concern of public sector IT is reducing operating costs. Local authority and government IT departments are under high pressure to demonstrate compliance with cuts coming out of the UK government’s austerity measures. Other priorities include reducing capital expenditure, improving information management and unlocking more value from information, all of which are linked to the idea of getting better value for money.

This is tough to achieve in practice, and while there clearly an appetite to improve, the big question is how to go about it. The webinar suggested three critical success factors for BI implementations:

1. Understand the business value of your data.
2. Understand what KPIs drive improvements to your business processes.
3. Understand the capabilities of your current BI tools and how they can deliver the required analyses and views.

The third factor is crucial when it comes to cost reduction. Too often organisations will jump on the bandwagon of a new and expensive system without first squeezing more from existing tools. It can be a fine balance because, if tools are too clunky, users just stop using them and data becomes unreliable; and nobody wants that scenario.

Carrying out some benchmarking and analysis to understand where data is held is always justifiable from a cost perspective.

And here’s where the surprise comes in. The number one public sector tool for sharing business intelligence is ... the humble spreadsheet. Trailing behind are other popular business information tools such as collaboration frameworks, generic and specialist desktop tools, specialist server technology, BI capability of EDRMs, and extensions of ERP and CRM.

The benefits of the spreadsheet are its ubiquity, and the ease with which data can be sliced or diced by people with the minimum of training. Spreadsheets work for everything from payroll to CRM and HR data.

It’s tempting to forget the sheer quantity of critical data locked away in spreadsheets in the average organisation, because it brings to mind the challenges inherent in ensuring that the data is accurate, reliable and accessible.

Other BI challenges thrown up by the survey include:

• A lack of user skills
• Fragmentation/ inconsistency of data stores
• Poor data management process
• Poor analytics process
• Lack of skills experience or training within IT
• Lack of clarity over who owns the data.

The good news is that there are common sense ways to tackle these barriers.

Developing a strategy up front, and estimating costs and timings, is simply good project management practice, but is essential to avoid unrealistic commitments.

Establishing data in a supportive and friendly environment helps to build confidence and clarity.

User training and skills development should be incorporated into the project as a whole, rather than tacked on as an afterthought. This applies to users out in the business and within the IT team.

For more tips see view the free webinar

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