Delivering license free data for a charity Background The charity needed a solution to deliver data from the field, back to the field. As an international NGO, it collects massive amounts of data from all around the world, in some cases having more information about a country that its own government. Data were accessible to the headquarters analysts but not people working in the field. This resulted in huge frustration for those field workers and made them believe the data collection work was less meaningful. Plan has IBM Cognos in place but this tool was expensive to distribute data reports to wide audiences. In addition, the charity has disparate integration systems and business intelligence (BI) environments. Software providers costs are high and offer insufficient support to keep technologies and software versioning current. Considering Plan is an international charity with a presence in more than 70 countries, contending with
multiple languages and numerous currencies on a daily basis. The enormity of the challenge is clear. The Solution South West Business Intelligence (SWBI) constructed a bespoke solution to meet the client’s needs. A web application that allowed the creation of ergonomically attractive, interactive reports (including lists), geomaps and charts was built. The solution was developed using low cost one-off licensed software, enabling the reports to be distributed to a wider audience without any added cost. Subsequently, SWBI has been supporting this charity with further enhancements making the solution as flexible as possible thereby reducing the development time of the reports and keeping them compatible with new browsers and media channels. The ongoing relationship extended into other areas of BI where SWBI has been helping the Plan to stay up to date with the latest technology, upgrading IBM Cognos every two years, installing Fix Packs and general maintenance.
The latest project SWBI and Plan have partnered on is an IBM Cognos solution to present the information in different languages and to allow real time data analysis. The latest version of IBM Cognos allow clients to do this using dynamic cubes, requiring collaborative working to update Plan’s systems and to develop the tools that will give them this capacity. The Benefits SWBI has been a digital partner of Plan International for many years. The solutions that were developed saved the client considerable cost in license fees and significantly advanced its BI capability, whilst delivering projects to both time and budget. A key asset to Plan has been the flexibility of SWBI in how it delivers its service. The main source of finance for the client comes from Eurozone countries making it more sensitive to currency fluctuations in terms of available funding. SWBI demonstrated its ability to ramp up and throttle back its resources, adjusting the level of people committed to Plan dependent on the shifting nature of project funding.
“ Your knowledge and experience was extremely helpful throughout the process; not only delivering a solution that works, but also within the agreed timeframe and limited budget. I was equally impressed with your flexibility to adapt the solution to our specific needs and extending our web services functionalities with resulting cost savings in deployment time for new reports/ dashboards. I highly recommend your services.�
SWBI Unit 2.1b, Temple Studios, Temple Gate, Bristol, BS1 6QA Telephone: +44 (0)117 3178102 E-mail: Info@swbi.co.uk www.swbi.co.uk