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In the summer of 2006, EFM Software was invited to the worldwide Microsoft conference in Boston. In this important event, which attracted over 10,000 participants, companies were awarded recognition for achieving exceptional results in the field of IT operationalization. In light of this event, EFM Software was awarded the prestigious international Achievement Award 2006 for its Bizzscore software solution. The jury bestowed this award partly due to the success the Bizzscore project has had for the Noorderpoort in Groningen – The Netherlands.
The Organization
Noorderpoort is an institute for vocational education, established through the merger of 14 schools of middle profession and adult education.
Noorderpoort has extended its scope of education by adding an institute for professional education and company training, a community school for continued education and departments of service attribution and professional training in Technology, the latter being formerly part of manpower services.
Noorderpoort provides education for 6 different sectors; Education, Healthcare and Well-being, Hotel and catering industry, Tourism and Nutrition, Technology, Business Services and Secondary school. Over 2,000 employees share the delivery of ‘contemporary’ education for over 23,000 participants spread over 45 different locations in Assen, Appingedam, Delfzijl, Groningen, Hoogezand, Leek, Musselkanaal, Stadskanaal, Veendam, Winschoten, and Winsum. This makes Noorderpoort the largest regional training institute of the north of the Netherlands.
The Cause
In mid 2003, Noorderpoort initiated a Business Intelligence Project which objective it was to reflect the financial and operational monitoring of an organization by linking data sources in a coherent and efficient manner. In other words, making sure that the most relevant strategic information was available at the right time and at the right place.
The Selection
By the end of 2004, Noorderpoort along with the support of Sogeti, initiated the selection procedure for suppliers of BI solutions (environments). EFM Software was selected together with three other suppliers of dashboard solutions for education. EFM Software is the software company that develops Bizzscore and is located in Rotterdam. Bizzscore is the solution for implementation of Performance Management, Quality Management, Management of dashboards, INK (EFQM) and the Balanced Scorecard. Over 500 organizations, including Menzis, ABN AMRO, various educational institutions, housing corporations, healthcare institutions and Ministries in the Netherlands and in Belgium are currently using Bizzscore in daily practice.
Bizzscore organizes and measures the performance of organizations and allows them to implement improvement management, in this sense the software connects strategy to different data sources. Within institutions of Noorderpoort this reflects data concerning participants, employees and finance. There are no additional administrative systems required to implement Bizzscore, since the program itself automatically draws information from the existing systems. Causal relationships between participant performances, sickness and financial reports are being analyzed and warnings are shown in critical areas. The software makes it possible to analyze the data in detail and to process improvements.
The Pilot
EFM Software was chosen to provide the software after a thorough analysis of the pros and cons of different software suppliers. Initially Noorderpoort had demanded a small scaled pilot with Bizzscore in order to replace the existing management information system of Noorderpoort with Bizzscore. When this had proven to be successful the so-called rollout could be implemented reflecting the complete strategic cycle.
After a period of three months the data source systems were connected, performance indicators were formulated and the required reports were composed. At the end of this period during the summer of 2005 an evaluation was carried out and the approval for a complete roll-out was given.
The Roll-Out
In November 2005 the roll-out was successfully finalized, which included relevant strategic indicators spread over approximately 200 balanced scorecards, ranging from the board of directors to specific teams in different education categories, all being facilitated with a system in which the strategy has been cascaded top-down by the organization and, all indicators (both financial and non-financial) were consolidated ‘bottom-up’ at the same time.
The Results
As a result of this implementation a template became available to be reused for other institutions like Noorderpoort. Nowadays, every Regional Career College can benefit from implementing Business Intelligence and Performance Management in a fast way.
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