According to the CFO, Mark Broadhead, “What we lacked was something centralised like a dashboard in a car. When you’re driving, you want a little red light to pop on when your oil is low. You don’t want to find out after your engine’s been stripped.”

As a client of Huon IT for almost a decade, RSL LifeCare has long appreciated Huon IT’s commitment to helping them solve business challenges through innovation. “Huon is passionate about the work we do and they always provide expert support and innovative ideas,” Mark Says. “They’re more a partner than a supplier.”

When Huon IT recommended that RSL LifeCare deploy Power BI – a suite of business analytic tools from Microsoft that pulls data from multiple platforms and presents it visually in one place – it didn’t take long before RSL LifeCare decided to move forward with the recommendation.”

Like many large organisations, RSL LifeCare’s important data and key performance indicators were housed in a variety of software systems. Because all the data was housed in different platforms, sometimes managers would miss warning signs until problems had blossomed.

Mark says that until this “silver bullet” software, Senior managers had resigned themselves to the fact that they’d need to use multiple solutions. As Mark explains, “our business is so big with so much going on, we need to see what’s on the edges before they fall off the road, but this was near impossible before Power BI.”

The management team were impressed with Power BI as a way to overcome this challenge and worked closely with Huon IT to design the dashboards that would make key performance indicators readily visible.

Huon IT provided the following solutions to RSL LifeCare:

• Discovery sessions with RSL LifeCare’s Senior Managers to determine what information needed to be accessible in the dashboard.
• A full project design that included all the steps, frameworks and actions required to deploy the solution in an efficient way.
• Collaborative approach with RSL LifeCare’s Database Administrator.
• Build and implementation, including access to all the required data across multiple platforms.
• Training and change management to ensure that RSL LifeCare’s management team could use Power BI as designed.

Dashboards were created for each of the General Managers (GMs) to learn about what was going on in their areas. “We had input into all the logistical considerations, and each Manager designed their own dashboard,” says Mark.

Collaborating with RSL LifeCare’s Database Administrator, Huon IT built the system quickly. “They got it done within two months,” Mark says. “It was very impressive.”

Mark says that the benefits became clear almost immediately. “All the feedback from the team was very positive. The GMs are able to see at a glance what they need to do. The cost-benefit is very strong. Now we have a helicopter view and the business improvement has been wonderful. It’s a fantastic resource management solution.”

• Real-time updates about key performance indicators.
• High cost-benefit ratio.
• Managers empowered to act more quickly and strategically.