London Borough of Havering Preserves Community Services and Facilities in the Wake of Budget Cuts with Help from Advanced Business Intelligence
 
 

London Borough of Havering Preserves Community Services and Facilities in the Wake of Budget Cuts with Help from Advanced Business Intelligence

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London Borough of Havering is the third-largest borough in Greater London, with a population of 230,000 and an area covering 27,742 acres, of which almost half is green space. Its administrative authority—Havering Council—provides education, housing, waste management, transportation, leisure facilities, and other local government services to the borough’s residents, businesses, and visitors.

To meet upcoming funding cuts, London Borough of Havering required more accurate and timely data to improve cost its analysis and decision-making. With Oracle Business Intelligence Applications and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, London Borough of Havering can better identify areas for cost-savings. It increased the savings that Oracle E-Business Suite On Demand delivers by 33%, from US$3 million to US$4 million in the first year after deployment. Executives now make decisions using data that is up to 24-hours old instead of six-weeks old. The council also has reduced back-office staff by one-third, using business intelligence to identify process efficiencies, and it has cut the number of office locations it needs from six to four. Havering is now implementing Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite to create an enterprisewide intelligence environment that will help it meet a two-fold increase in funding cuts in 2014.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from London Borough of Havering

  • "Oracle’s Business Intelligence Suite delivers timely data and decision-making capabilities, enabling us to extract maximum value from every pound." – Andrew Blake Herbert, Group Director Finance and Commerce, London Borough of Havering

  • Identify where the council can cut expenditures through smarter financial, procurement, and human resources management to meet a 7.1% government funding cut without eroding service quality to the local community
  • Gain timely, accurate, cost-per-service data to support planning and budgeting and make the financial and human impact of cost-savings visible to decision-makers
  • Evaluate how Havering uses council-managed buildings and facilities—such as, libraries, public parks, and other services—and explore whether the borough can eliminate facilities, share them with other organizations, or give community groups an opportunity to raise funds to keep facilities, such as libraries and parks operating at current levels
  • Track and compare the costs and services provided by subcontractors, who manage waste disposal and cleansing on behalf of the borough, to ensure they deliver the best value for the money
  • Identify how to reduce social care, housing, education, and transportation services costs—accounting for 80% of Havering’s budget—while maintaining high-quality standards in preparation for 2014 government funding cuts

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Increased by 33%, from US$3 million to U$4 million, cost savings delivered by Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 On Demand with timely, pervasive insights from Oracle Business Intelligence Applications and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition
  • Captured and interrogated critical financial, procurement, and human resources data to deliver meaningful intelligence that budget holders, department heads, business managers, analysts, and planners can use for fact-based decision-making
  • Delivered key performance indicator dashboards, refreshed daily, to 400 executives with speed-of-thought, self-service drill down to data less than 24 hours old—removing the need for the IT team to extract figures from the previous month’s data that could be up to six weeks out of date
  • Benefited from intuitive dashboard functionality, personalized data views, and multiple reporting formats to rapidly gain user adoption after minimal training, streamlining the cultural transformation to an accountable, business-driven environment
  • Reduced by 50% the time managers spend interrogating statistics to produce strong business cases for additional social or community-care funding
  • Cut―from six to four―the number of buildings that the council exclusively occupies, using Business Intelligence to assess and compare total costs of running the buildings
  • Benefited from accurate, timely data on the cost of providing education, leisure, and community care, gaining the ability to analyze the use of each service and identify where savings could be made with minimal impact on citizen satisfaction
  • Reduced back-office staff by one-third, from 245 to 160, using business intelligence to analyze cycle times for routine activities and standardize use of more efficient processes
  • Achieved the council’s target of saving US$4 million in the first year and annually thereafter, without closing parks, libraries, or other public amenities
  • Exceeded efficiency target in the second year after deployment, saving US$2.4 million in the first quarter alone
  • Implemented Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite to extend reporting and analysis beyond Oracle E-Business Suite to the third-party tools that manage social care, housing, education, and transportation, and to deliver an integrated intelligence platform
  • Began building an enterprisewide intelligence environment using Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite that will enable Havering to meet the anticipated doubling of cuts in government funding from 7.1% to 14% in 2014

Resources