How important is good management information to RAVU?
“Management information is essential for us to make the right decisions. It also helps to monitor our performance and adjust processes where necessary. Good information is also important in the context of learning and improving. Furthermore, as ambulance care, we are accountable in a transparent manner. So data and information are crucial for the RAVU in this regard as well.”
“Take the past COVID period as an illustration. From the start of the pandemic, we have focused on developing good management information. In this way, the crisis team can properly monitor how, for example, the demand for ambulance care is developing, how many COVID-related care we provide in a period and how much capacity is available. Based on this information, we can take additional measures or adjust if necessary.”
How are the BI/BA activities embedded within RAVU?
“Our BI activities have been centralized as an activity. In addition to employing a Centric BI consultant, an Information Manager started working for us in January 2021. With this we want to take our information management and management information to the next level. BI is used in the daily information requests of various departments. They have a set of standard reports from Cognos for this purpose. In addition, the consultant carries out ad hoc information requests. Users also receive a daily summary of the previous day's performance.
“Behind the current Cognos environment there are still replica databases from various systems. By moving step-by-step to one integral database in which all sources are accessible, a 'data warehouse' is created, which makes it easier to combine information from various sources and to define an unambiguous truth. There are various key users who can create their own reports and many users have a subscription to a standard report.
What is the impact of business intelligence on your operations?
“It is getting bigger and bigger, because the hunger for information is growing. By keeping the basic principles of 'correct, timely and complete' in scope, confidence in and use of BI will naturally grow. BI allows us to deploy our ambulances better. Business Intelligence, but especially Business Analytics, makes it possible to gain deeper insights into the 'why'.”
What do you see as the most important added value for business operations?
“You cannot steer without information, but information also has a price. And you always have to be able to explain it. As mentioned, BI is part of demonstrability and transparency.”
What is your biggest future challenge when it comes to business intelligence?
“Data science seems like a promising field, but it requires high-quality information. It also requires a thorough knowledge of systems and processes. A tool alone is never enough, it stands or falls with domain knowledge, that is truly essential.”
What is your experience so far with Centric's services?
“I experience the collaboration with Centric as open and constructive. Thorough knowledge, good focus on results and a good mix of solving problems now and structurally improving our management and control information..”