For 110 years, Plunket has been giving New Zealand children the best possible start in life.
Website: https://www.plunket.org.nz/
“I partnered with Stellar because they have a very strategic mindset. They understand the long-term objective, and take it into account when calculating where they can add value. There’s a whole bunch of small steps to get to the big strategic goals, but the work we’re doing enables nurses to do more, faster, and with greater compassion because of the understanding we’re creating.”
Mike Rankin,
Head of Business Intelligence, Plunket
The Royal New Zealand Plunket Society provides a health, development and wellbeing service to every child in the country, designed to make a difference during each child’s first 1000 days.
Like many non-profit organisations, Plunket has been focusing on the essential roles of technology and information. Recently, Plunket started its data-driven transformation.
Sharing the knowledge
Business intelligence (BI) and analytics are all about information – giving organisations the data they need to generate positive outcomes. In Plunket’s case, establishing a solid knowledge base was a critical first step.
The more they know about children in Plunket and can map outcomes to the conditions and demographic situations, the more they can help. It’s about knowledge management as well as BI and the analytics across the top. How do they take the collective knowledge and apply it to 800 nurses across the country, predict what’s going to start happening for certain segments of the children that they see, and improving the long-term outcomes for these children?
Using data and analytics, Plunket aims to predict each child’s likelihood of various health, social and environmental outcomes. That’s not only good news for children. If you can prevent someone from going to prison or being in long-term hospital care because you intervened early to identify prospective issues, and they contribute to society rather than detract from it, that’s millions of dollars of cost removed.
Plunket’s partnership with Stellar Consulting
Achieving that sort of return on investment doesn’t happen overnight. Plunket partnered with Stellar because of Stellar’s strategic mindset and a long-term objective. There’s a whole bunch of small steps to get to the big strategic goals, but the work which has been done enables nurses to do more, faster, and with greater compassion, because of the understanding created.
Stellar worked with stakeholders to understand how Plunket’s operations work, what data was available, and what would add the most value for their purposes, says Stellar senior consultant Jason Campbell.
“We initially created a prototype dashboard using Microsoft Power BI, that brought the necessary data straight out of a SQL Server data mart. This only reflected the data from a single source system, however. Once the prototype was approved, Plunket provided the code to merge data from the two main source systems that were necessary to provide a complete picture.”
The final solution used SQL Server, Integration Services, and SharePoint to daily provide fresh data to a dashboard that is accessible through the Power BI service.
“The solution highlights metrics and context that enable Plunket to better manage staff caseloads and delivery performance,” says Jason. “It enables them to make sure that crucial child milestones are met in time, and assists staff to more efficiently plan appointments with clients.”
Plunket has been working with Stellar on a dashboard for frontline engagement. Stellar has developed a very good-looking and informative solution that has really made a difference to our nurses.
It’s the beginning of a long digital journey for Plunket, but with the team at Stellar Consulting devising BI and analytics solutions. The future for New Zealand’s children is looking brighter.
