KMD

Improving business intelligence and reporting with OpenText

KMD had been using open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool (BIRT) to provide its customers with reporting, as part of its Nexus solution. Peter Soenderskov, Product Manager at KMD, explained why the company decided to seek a new, more feature-rich, commercial solution, “The reporting solution we had in place was great for static reporting. But once reports were produced, there was no way for our customers to adapt the report into different views, effectively slicing and dicing the data to provide greater analytics capabilities. We also wanted to improve performance, so we began to look for a better, faster, more flexible way to provide reporting and analytics within our Nexus solution.”

After considering its options, KMD approached OpenText partner, ReportSoft. With extensive experience in designing, implementing and supporting OpenText Analytics solutions, ReportSoft was ideally placed to help KMD move from the open source solution to a more feature, function-rich commercial solution.

“ReportSoft has helped us build our understanding of the capabilities of Analytics. From the outset, we’ve been able to call upon their expertise and experience, helping us shorten the time it would have taken to improve our business intelligence reporting within our Nexus solution,” said Soenderskov.

Key among the reasons KMD selected Analytics was its ability to handle the scheduling of report generation. This negated the need for another product to handle that, helping to keep the overall cost of ownership down.

“We were also attracted by the licensing model of OpenText Analytics. Our solution is already used by around one third of Danish municipalities, with more being added each month. OpenText Analytics provides us with unlimited end users, so we know that as we expand, our costs are kept to a minimum, key in the cost sensitive public sector market,” said Soenderskov.

End users love adaptability, personalization and speed

KMD’s customers were used to the static type of reporting that was available to them. However, they wanted to be able to do more, to produce their own, personalized ad-hoc analytics, remodel existing reports, view dashboards and perform deeper analysis by crafting their own views on data.

“Our end users have been extremely positive to the analytic capabilities OpenText Analytics provides them,” said Soenderskov. “They can now slice and dice their data to help them understand where they can perhaps gain efficiencies by seeing what’s working and what’s not working so well. Where tasks could take minutes or even hours, OpenText Analytics provides what they need in seconds.”

Analytics provides the flexible analytics that end users welcome, as well as dashboards, where they can see at a glance the status of their service provision, with numerous data visualizations that help them take action quickly and effectively.

Powerful analytics saves time and money

End users now have access to the powerful, self-service reporting and business intelligence that Analytics provides within Nexus to identify opportunities to save money, savings which can then be invested into other services.

“One of our customers used OpenText Analytics to create a view that enabled its users to identify to whom they were sending nurses out to administer eye drops. By providing training, those individuals now administer the drops themselves, saving the service provider more than one million kroner, or over £100,000,” said Soenderskov.

KMD’s customers are using Analytics to significantly reduce their reliance on Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets, which are time consuming and complex to set up and maintain. The service providers are now able to produce reports and graphical views that allow them to analyze their data entirely by themselves. The intuitive user interface of Analytics helps them bring their data alive.

“OpenText Analytics fits perfectly with our browser-based, SaaS solution. Users feel at home and are confident to create and save their own reports, views, and dashboards, in addition to the standard set we provide. This saves them time and money, with no need to call upon expensive or scarce resources within their organizations or from outside,” said Soenderskov.

KMD is working to expand its user base. Around one third of all Danish municipalities are already using or planning to use Nexus in the coming months, and they expect to grow this to around two thirds of the total, 98.

“OpenText Analytics is one part of our bigger solution, but a key part. The speed, flexibility, and capability have been welcomed by our customers and our own developers. Once data objects are provided, we know we have the same baseline for the analyzer, dashboard, and reports areas of the solution. This ensures we can build all elements in the same way, it is efficient and cost effective,” said Soenderskov.