Case study
Dec 2018
-
Feb 2020
Take Keith's woRD FOR IT
Keith Forster, Business Intelligence Manager at Durham County Council.
"We sought out the expertise of Vertex Intelligent Data to assist with our Children’s Social Care reporting, following our migration to Liquidlogic’s LCS system. We required a team with prior experience of Social Care system migrations and Vertex’s track record fitted the bill perfectly. Their knowledge and familiarity with our in-house Microsoft SQL Server, Mobile Report Publisher and SQL Server Reporting Services allowed them to hit the ground running and produce critical reports and dashboards on ‘Day 1’.
"These advancements...
allowed us to trust the data our reports were giving us."
During the first phase of the project, Vertex worked closely with our stakeholders to produce a list of logical priorities that would provide us with valuable insight into our data. This was assembled into a workflow, which they kept us updated on and delivered from, in a timely fashion.
The second phase of the project centred around Statutory reporting, our Monthly Measures report and a Data Quality package. The team at Vertex produced several of our Statutory Returns, including Annex A from scratch. They entirely recreated our Monthly Measures report which featured over 100 key measures that our service use to monitor and track performance on a monthly basis and they delivered a package of Data Quality checks which safeguarded us from incorrect input, inaccurate analysis and allowed us to make confident, informed decisions.
"They held a number of interactive training courses..."
These advances significantly improved efficiency, removing a costly requirement for manual involvement and promoting a single definition ethos, which allowed us to trust the data our reports were giving us.
Not only did the overall aesthetic of our reporting improve considerably, but end users also found the dashboard interface easy to navigate and their self-service nature significantly reduced the number of ‘one off’ requests we received.
It was also pleasing to see that it wasn’t just the end user facing work that was considered and intuitive. The team at Vertex took a consistent, neat and logical approach to developing in our databases. Producing views (saved queries) around each key subject area, they took care to ensure the solution was consistent and could eventually be maintained by our in-house staff.
Each view contained all the critical information you’d expect to find around each topic and provided us with an easy to use, concise dataset to feed our dashboards. This approach made any logic changes simple, allowing us to revise the definition in one location, which would feed through and update multiple reports automatically.
"We’re still reaping the rewards from the fantastic work Vertex completed for us."
As the project entered the final stage, Vertex began the handover process and their team couldn’t have been more helpful. They held a number of interactive training courses, using real world examples and took the team through the work they’d produced, all while being careful to pitch at the right level. They really couldn’t do enough to ensure the transition was as smooth as possible.
We’re still reaping the rewards from the fantastic work Vertex completed for us. We’re hugely appreciative of what Vertex did here in Durham; the team put us in a great place in terms of reporting, as well as helping our own staff to develop their skills and knowledge of SSRS and SSMS. I’d heartily recommend Ben and the Vertex team to anyone."