Empowering a local council to generate data-driven insights: using PowerBI at Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council

by Charlie Cox - Consulting Manager, UK Government Consulting
| minute read

Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council wanted to make it easier for staff to use data

Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council’s ‘Think Digital’ strategy outlines a bold vision of the future. They want to use modern and innovative digital methods to support service delivery, drive change and efficiency, and be customer-centric. As part of their modernisation programme and digital journey, the Council wanted to make it easier for staff to make data-led decisions.

The Council had some existing challenges with using data

The Council faced a number of challenges with data. Like many local authorities, staff found it difficult to access the data which was manually collated across different spreadsheets. Further, there was lots of data but no way for staff to visualise it and understand what it meant. Ultimately, it was difficult for staff to make data-led decisions. The Council partnered with Sopra Steria to tackle these challenges, and asked us to support them with delivering a pilot Power BI solution to manage complaints data collected in their Jadu CXM platform.

Sopra Steria worked with the Council to develop the Power BI solution

The key requirements for the Council were data visibility and staff usability, and these principles underpinned our approach to delivering the Power BI solution. We worked with the Council to define their goals and prioritise reporting and visualisation requirements, consistently focusing on end-user need. We involved staff when we built and tested the dashboards, ensuring that user-led visualisation and reporting requirements were translated to a solution that was easy for staff to use and understand.

The Council is now seeing the benefits of the transformation

Staff can now easily access complaints data in one place. They can obtain real-time insights into performance and outcomes and can quickly filter the reports according to their need. This has enabled staff to better identify the pain points that customers experience with services and understand lessons learnt, using this insight to improve the services that customers receive.

This Power BI pilot is just the beginning for Welwyn Hatfield as they continue to harness the potential of their data to improve customer experience. Their investment in Power BI and Jadu integration means that staff across services will be able to better see and understand what the data is telling them and help to create a truly customer-centric council with digitally enabled staff.

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