Business Intelligence and data warehouse gives Viken valuable insight

It started as a BI solution to report on figures for Østfold County Municipality. Today, the solution set up by Cegal (earlier SYSCO) provides accurate figures for finance, school, and personnel administration for the entire extended Viken county. Read about how Business Intelligence gives employees insight into Viken's figures and data.

 "Marianne" is the most common first name among the employees in Viken County Municipality, followed by "Morten". The most common job title is “lecturer with additional education”. That’s a fun fact from Viken’s large, ever-growing data warehouse called “Digital Insight”. Viken uses the data warehouse daily to provide valuable insight, such as always up-to-date sick leave statistics, to ensure speedy and better follow-up of the sick. It provides a better working environment for the individual, as well as financial savings for Viken and society

The merger of the three county municipalities of Østfold, Akershus, and Buskerud into the elongated Viken is like a complex group merger.

The county council has 11,763 employees and a population of 1.24 million, nearly a quarter of Norway’s population. Over 5353 kilometers of roads, 63 schools, 60 dental clinics, public transportation, and 42,000 upper secondary school students are all part of Viken’s responsibilities.

Such a merger entails major challenges like data and systems. Some of the challenges include:

• How should historical data be taken care of and made available?
• Which systems are to be continued?
• What should be done to ensure the quality of the data in transitioning to new systems?

Viken county municipality’s special advisor for economics Jostein Gjeldnes highlights this example of the system’s complexity.

We have one financial system for Østfold, one for Akershus, and one for Buskerud, plus a new system for Viken.

Data warehouse and Business Intelligence

Different systems and a mixture of old and new data create opportunities for errors and misinterpretations due to ambiguities about what the individual entries mean, as well as data quality concerns.

Together with Cegal, Viken has solved the challenges of collecting the data and integrating it in a data warehouse (Oracle Data Integrator). Furthermore, Cegal has implemented a Business Intelligence solution (Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)) to retrieve data from the data warehouse.

An integrated data warehouse with BI is a business management tool used for reporting and functions as a management and control system. Over a thousand managers and employees from Hemsedal to Halden use digital insight.

The solution, according to Gjeldnes, is extremely user-friendly and contains simple and easy-to-understand overviews of:

• Finance and accounting, including accounting against the budget, an overview of outstanding claims, and different budget versions.
• Human resources administration/HR with positions, average age, gender distribution, absence overview, and salary analyses.
• School overview with grades, absences, etc. (Right now, there is only historical data from Østfold and Buskerud, but work is being undertaken to integrate school data from all Viken).

With good access to real-time data, it becomes easier to be proactive. For example, the updated sickness statistics mean that Viken can follow up on absent employees faster and better. "Digital insight" allows for better monitoring of many aspects daily, which in turn allows for better resource allocation and planning. This results in the elimination of double work and the saving of money, among other things.

Preserves old data and takes care of new ones

Historical data from old systems is stored in the data warehouse, where the old systems are no longer in use, but the data is still needed to be cared for and utilized. In addition, data from active systems as well as new systems are handled simultaneously. All data in the data warehouse is validated and quality assured.

Today, the data warehouse contains over 2,000 subject-area tables, almost 2 billion database rows, 2,000 analytical and search filters, and over 60 different dashboards. There is a constant increase in the amount of information available.

Gjeldnes says that with the BI solution, the entire elongated county council receives a common picture of the various areas.

- The data warehouse, which Cegal has established, provides us with reports and dashboards that can be compared, regardless of the source system. It is more important to agree on what the numbers indicate rather than whether they are 100, 99, or 98 percent accurate. Often, it is the changes in the data that are important.

It is stated by the economist that the solution enables you to see errors more quickly and go back to the source and correct them. This will result in more accurate statistics, more accurate accounting, and less likelihood of errors in the organization.

-An entry in a system can have different meanings, even if the entity is the same. As a result, when you extract data into various spreadsheets, you may become stuck discussing whether the data is correct. Rather than focusing on what the numbers tell us, Gjeldnes explains what they mean.

Cegal understands our language and knows us well. Something that has ensured that the solution works well and is used by so many. Cegal has done a very good job, continues Gjeldnes.

Long Story

Cegal's consultants have worked with Østfold and Buskerud counties for almost ten years. It started with establishing a BI solution to report on figures in the Oracle eBusiness Suite for Østfold County Municipality, Oppland County Municipality, and eventually Buskerud.

The next major project was the switch to Visma as the ERP system for Østfold County Council.

The third project was to collect school data from the school systems of Østfold (Extens and OPPAD) into the BI solution.

The work with Viken started in 2019 with the objective of further developing the BI solution to cover the entire new county municipality. Viken uses Visma as its ERP system, and the county council has decided to continue the solution from Østfold as a joint BI solution.

Viken now has almost 1,000 employees using the solution for reporting and analysis in the areas of finance and accounting, human resources, payroll, and school administration.

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