Case: Feenstra Heat

Feenstra Heat Total Care is a company that operates nationally to install and maintain heating system. Feenstra is part of Nuon which provides more than just energy for her ​​clients. Feenstra performs maintenance and installation services for both private and business customers.

Need

For the service division, which is responsible for maintenance, it is important to have insight in the effectiveness of its operation and efficiency of its maintenance activities. Due to the variety of systems which are used in different locations it was difficult, if not impossible, to have a clear picture of operations with the existing information infrastructure. Thus there was a strong demand for a comprehensive information facility that was flexible, future proof and competitively priced.

Solution

DIKW Consulting implemented Astragy as a set of online business intelligence reports and analysis solutions for Feenstra to which all authorised personnel can logon securely via the web. By means of this solution, headquarters now has daily accurate performance indicators of all individual branches.

Challenges

Until recently, the sites have worked autonomously, using a variety of systems. With the acquisition of Nuon the need emerged to get a better control on performance of the individual sites. Because of the existence of many decoupled systems, this was a very large scale operation, every month. Many separate files were exchanged with different formats which were processed further in desktop applications like MS Access and Excel. A very time consuming, error prone and inflexible process which could only be carried out by a few key people.

Solution

There were a number of problems to be addressed;

1) The automation of data transport from different systems.

2) Integration of the data into a fully adequate reporting environment.

3) Definition of clear Performance Indicators to be trusted and used by local management.

The Astragy Intelligence Platform can handle the different source systems independently. This includes the use of the Enterprise Memory, a Real Life Data Vault model, in which data are recorded in a uniform manner without loss of quality. From here reportdatamars are drafted which are specifically tailored to the needs of end users. Astragy helps to tackle the first two problems quickly and easily for Feenstra.

Simultaneously, DIKW supported Feenstra through its Scrum4BI agile approach with several prototypes in making the KPI reports in a short time. This support consisted of feeding the discussion with current data and reporting mockups, so that obtaining insight into the consequences of the choices in the KPI definitions could be made swiftly.

Once the choices were made, the first dashboard services became available. An online analysis environment has been designed, containing the most common data elements such as number of plants, contracts, work performed and proceeds. So ad-hoc queries could be solved by self service on the analysis cube.

Advantages

Because of Astragy, Feenstra now has a dashboard for managing its service operation from day to day. Without doing many complex manual activities, controllers can carry out ad hoc analysis independently.

With Astragy Feenstra has a Business Intelligence solution that it is ready to meet their future information needs.

If you are interested and you want to know more about the benefits the Astragy platform can bring to your organisation please download a white-paper, fill in the contact form or give us a call!