Modernised reporting for a NSW Council
GWI was engaged by a NSW Council to modernise their reporting from manual, time-consuming processes to advanced data visualisations using Power BI.
The context
As the community population continues to grow, Council has seen more data being collected, processed and analysed, particularly around the reporting of development application timeframes.
For several years, Council has used Microsoft Excel to process and present corporate reports. They had a high level of in-house expertise in this tool and the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems used to track development applications. However, they found that keeping these reports up to date was taking an increasing amount of time each month, and the results were complicated to share with senior council stakeholders.
GWI was engaged to modernise this reporting into a Microsoft Power BI solution.
The method
GWI worked with key Council stakeholders to understand data sources and reporting responsibilities. It was revealed that Council was overly reliant on manual processes and siloed expertise, and reports had become very time consuming to produce and difficult to share with stakeholders.
Further reports were only being generated on a monthly basis.
The GWI team built a Development Application dashboard solution that automated data ingestion from the ERP system to streamline and simplify reporting for Council.
The impact
GWI’s solution eliminated all manual data entry and automated the reporting of the existing 26 visualisations. All of the dashboard reports have been delivered as Power BI apps with security models allowing users from different areas within Council to see their data while limiting the visibility of other data.
The reports are updated twice daily, instead of monthly, allowing Council to deliver more accurate and timely information while significantly reducing the amount of effort required.
GWI also conducted training sessions with Council staff to ensure they are fully equipped to maintain and expand the use of the dashboards for further modernisation across Council.
As a result of working with GWI to modernise their reporting and analytics, Council can access and present data in a manner that is visually appealing, digestible for senior stakeholders, and reflects a real-time view of the development applications.
