The leading Hungarian utility back office service provider started a new initiative to improve their bottom line through data driven decisions while improving their service quality. As they grow with large client acquisitions by taking over their back office services (i.e.: invoicing,payments, customer care), the data architecture 1 have became fragmented with different organizational siloes handling separate data requests. As a consequence overall decision making time and quality worsened and resource needs to support crucial decisions increased. As pressure on the IT architecture grew, decision support have been flooded with office tools (mainly custom queries loaded into Excel files) which further deteriorated trust in data quality and exposing security challenges.

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Explore

We interviewed 15 teams handling the majority of the reporting requests and gathered all current reports in a structured report catalogue with sample files. We mapped the IT infrastructure and put it into our best practice landscape to show what’s missing. We also identified related projects in progress to be able to plan the next steps without interfering with other business priorities.

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Design

We designed the future state of decision making with user personas, a fitting reporting pyramid and key performance indicators to be included in it. We designed a streamlined a streamlined enterprise data model to have everybody on the same page when thinking about data. 3 We also showed what kind of tech tools needed to ease the pressure on IT.

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Plan

We compiled a strategic program with enabler projects focusing on the data management process, skills and technology tools and also on supporting business initiatives with the introduction of thematic data marts. We also delivered a detail project plan for each initiative for the next year with scope definition, budget, responsibles and a proposed schedule.

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Current report catalogue

We compiled a structured report catalog with common attributes and descriptions about the 293 identified reports. On a self-declaration basis we also identified the most
time-consuming ones and the overlaps between them. Moving forward it served as a starting point for the design of a more focused and streamlined KPI and report set.
In addition to that we planned how to channel all reports into a single content management platform to avoid further under-the-radar reports.

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Future reporting landscape

We presented an extensive set of industry specific KPIs and selected the most relevant and ones by a collaborative approach involving all relevant stakeholders. We identified key reporting and decision maker personas to have a common understanding about different expectations. Along with the current report catalog and the gathered requirements about the future reporting landscape we planned the future reporting hierarchy, the KPIs to be included in each report and the proposed ownership of them.

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Program and project plan

When we saw where we are heading we broke down each future deliverable (reports, processes, trainings) into initiatives and project plans with all the details required to
move forward with confidence. As the success of each initiative depends on our client’s commitment and capacity to change we discussed all possible paths and options with them and chose the most suitable for them.

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