Implementing a Streamlined, Powerful Incident Reporting Solution

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue

Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Authority’s Corporate Support department provides performance information to management and borough commanders. This information is obtained by a Management Information System (MIS) from data automatically recorded for call-out incidents. In 2009, the Authority introduced a new Incident Recording System (IRS), and commissioned Manigent to develop a reporting suite. In addition, Manigent was asked to improve the existing MIS reporting suite by making it more robust, flexible and less costly to maintain.

Manigent delivered a cost-effective, sustainable, and easy to maintain solution that provides five years of MIS and IRS data in a consistent, easily accessible format for management, statutory and ad-hoc reporting and analysis.

Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue selected Manigent because they were able to collectively offer over 25 years’ experience of implementing and deploying CorVu. In addition, as a Microsoft partner, Manigent has in-depth experience of Microsoft Business Intelligence technology. This unique combination of CorVu and Microsoft expertise and experience meant

that Manigent was an ideal partner for Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue.

Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue were impressed with Manigent’s willingness to add value to the project, going beyond the initial remit to put in place small measures that provided significant, long lasting benefits. As an example, a calendar was added to the SQL reporting database. This was then available for use by any other SQL system, thus creating consistency for reporting by period and ensuring that periods in each SQL system were the same.

As part of the implementation, Manigent ensured that Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue staff had a thorough understanding of the system and its capabilities, leaving behind a solid foundation of in-house knowledge. Paul Sharples, Head of Corporate Support at the Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Authority said: “I found our Manigent contacts exceptional, their knowledge of CorBusiness and SQL Server was excellent, but they also had an exceptional ability to understand our requirements and translate them into easy-to-use technology solutions…. Manigent really did an exceptional job for us”

OverviewGreater Manchester Fire & Rescue Authority is the United Kingdom’s second largest fire and rescue authority. It employs over 2,500 staff, operating 41 fire stations across ten districts. In total, it covers an area of nearly 500 square miles, with a culturally diverse population of 2.5 million people. During 2007, it attended over 49,000 incidents. The organisation also works in the community, carrying out home fire risk assessments, conducting visits to schools and advising businesses on fire safety.

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We selected Manigent because of their evidentknowledge and expertise around both Microsoftand CorVu technologies

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For several years, users accessed performanceinformation using a web-based menu toaccess custom reports generated usingcorporate reporting tools from CorVu™,CorBusiness™ and HyperVu™. While thesetools provided accurate information,maintenance of the system was convolutedand time consuming; it couldn’t offer theflexibility and usability that was increasinglydemanded, and there was limited provisionfor ad-hoc analysis.

Although generally happy with the CorVuproducts that had provided a solid foundationfor reporting, the Corporate Supportdepartment felt it needed to improve andsignificantly expand deployment across theweb. With a difficult-to-use interface,hampered by a slow online menu system andsluggish report rending, the legacy GreaterManchester Fire & Rescue reporting systemrequired a complex filing and schedulingsystem to deploy reports and analytics to theweb. The process of adding or editing reportsand links sometimes resulted in inconsistentcontent and presentation: menus and webpages were constructed using a timeconsuming and cumbersome “briefing book”tool with limited image management, alignment tools and no convenient style controls.

To access valuable organisationalinformation, Corporate Support had tostruggle with inconsistent report creationand editing processes. The group developedregular reports by scheduling multipleOracle database extracts throughout themonth. This required a complex dateformula and meant that static, historical datahad to be rebuilt. There was no option forselecting performance information byvariable date ranges, so trend analysis was

limited. Some of the prompts and selectionsequences were convoluted, whichdissuaded users from exploring the datawithin the system. Often, users preferred todownload portions of data to manipulatewith Excel; users regularly made requeststhat required the reworking of existingreports that led to a mass of developmentstructures. Ultimately, the reporting systemgrew to over 4,000 files.

A Complicated Legacy SystemPrior to engaging Manigent, Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue had a complex architectureand process for managing and accessing performance information. Manigent redevelopedthe organisation’s data management infrastructure, introduced a new user interface,enhanced report development and deployment, as well as ad-hoc reporting.

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The underlying data schema was based on anolder version of Oracle containing hundredsof tables many of which were simply legacy enteties and no longer accessed. Often, these tables had cryptic names, numerous columns, over 50 code lookup tables and an overwhelming number of fields, which made it difficult to utilise the reporting tool’s data dictionary. There werehuge lists of schema – and no search utility –in which the report designer had to locate thedesired items, and limitations in the schemafrequently disallowed the join, necessary fordata extractions. Reporting was additionallyslowed due to date fields comprising timestamps, which necessitated an entire year’sworth of data be extracted then filtered forthe required periods.

In order to develop and deploy performanceindicator reports, such as the national fireservice performance indicators (NIs) thatcombined strategic target data with actual

incident data, Greater Manchester Fire &Rescue often accessed records from multipledatabase sources. These reports were createdwith complex structures of joins and filters,and were used to cross-reference specificindicators that categorised thousands ofincidents over the current and previous years.A data extraction then had to be scheduled,delivering a static report and a chart createdon the single indicator data set. This processwas repeated for each indicator. A singleerror would necessitate the rebuilding of anentire pyramid of related extract files.

For example, a complete set of indicators fora single report relating to a specific boroughmeant that each indicator pyramid had to becombined into one massive joined data set ofover 50 branches. Upon completion, eachindicator report and its associated charts werepresented online.

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Introduction of an Incident Reporting SystemIn March 2009, the structure of the underlying Oracle data source was changed withthe introduction of a new Incident Recording System. Now, two data schemes – theorganisation’s old MIS and its new IRS – had to be addressed. Both systems containedessential incident data, but the process of reporting had become unmanageable. Inorder to compare data from the MIS and from the IRS, personnel were limited to specificpriority reports that required labour-intensive collation, combining data from mismatchedincident recording systems.

Two reporting schema were required toexploit data from the old MIS and new IRSsystems, and the overlapping structures madeselection of target data very confusing.Because of these limitations, data wasextracted in very specific queries toproprietary files. These files were thenfiltered, joined, appended or merged into apyramid of related files to make up thedesired data combinations.

With each update to the system, menus andreports, the collection of files, folders,schedules and menu pages grew morecomplex. However, the CorBusinesscorporate reporting tool still offered powerfuland effective reporting features, which theorganisation could exploit to improve theend-user experience. Greater Manchester Fire& Rescue engaged Manigent to leverage thepower of CorVu’s CorBusiness, whilestreamlining the organisation’s datainfrastructure.

Simplified ArchitectureManigent redeveloped the organisation’s reporting system architecture into one thatwas simple, robust and flexible. A new incident reporting data layer was put into place,comprising a single database that combines SQL database tables and views, and onemulti-dimensional cube. This data layer provides a simpler, faster single source of datathat is accessible via Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue’s existing CorVu corporate reportingtool as well as standard Microsoft Office tools such as Excel.

As the organisation moves towarddecommissioning the legacy MIS system,historic data is stored in an archive, ratherthan being reconstructed from the Oracledatabase with each job. These archived tables

are indexed to improve performance. Onlydata from the new IRS system is extractedlive, and the data layer is refreshed eachmorning using three SQL Server IntegrationServices packages.

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With this new structure, report designers candevelop reports more quickly, using livequeries against the data layer. Comprehensivedate prompts and current month columns helpthe report developer automate a number ofrelative date constraints on the data, such as:“current month year-to-date versus last year-to date”. This allows a significantly smallernumber of records to be retrieved and reportsto be displayed more quickly. It is no longernecessary to schedule data in order to createpyramids of scheduled queries. Rather, an IRScube allows for multi-dimensional analysis andinstant aggregation of statistics, which can bepresented via Excel charts and pivot tables.

All indicator data has been collated into adedicated data mart, with one view, oneactual/target table and a calendar lookup table.As a result, all performance statistics related toover twenty indicators for current and previousyear periods are presented instantly in oneparameterised report. This master reportdisplays target level comparisons using oneview as the source query, greatly simplifyingthe process, and improving performance andenhancing choice for the end user.

Using the functionality of CorBusiness whenreporting on a specific indicator, users cansimply navigate through one prompt to displaythat indicator in a template report. This isaccompanied by a drill-down chart to allow forad hoc analysis of the indicator to borough,ward and month levels. Both report and drilldownchart are presented on a dedicatedindicator dashboard page within Greater

Manchester Fire & Rescue’s Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Services 2007 system. Each reporthas a unique URL in a SharePoint page view,with the parameter defined on the URL options.

By introducing true ad-hoc reporting, Manigenthas empowered Greater Manchester Fire &Rescue to get specific, actionable informationwhen it’s needed. Users can downloadtemplate Excel files containing pivot tables ofthe incident statistics and then select their ownad-hoc analysis data, choosing various datecombinations from five years of current andhistorical data, seamlessly combined from boththe IRS and MIS. Each morning, a business- specific OLEDB cube is automatically refreshed with new data, from which the Corporate Support team has developed template pivot tables in Excelworkbooks to provide a starting point foranalysis.

These Excel files are uploaded to theSharePoint document library and files arelinked within various pages in theperformance-reporting web site. When usersselect the desired Excel file, it opens with a livelink to the underlying cube. Users cannotoverwrite or alter the original Excel workbooks,but they are able to manipulate the report bychanging the rows, columns, filters and layoutof pivot tables to suit their data requirements.The resulting file can be printed, copied orsaved locally, so users can share their analysisand insights. Because the base data is derivedfrom a controlled source that cannot be altered,the organisation is working from one version ofthe truth.

Simple, Yet Robust ReportingThe underlying database schema is now simply ten tables, each of which contains only thosecolumns required for statistical reporting; all complex joining of data sources is performedusing Microsoft Integration Services.

As well as enabling us to be more productive,Manigent’s new system has reduced our costsby £20K per year

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This successful project has allowed GreaterManchester Fire & Rescue to better utilise itsperformance information in order to planmore effectively and to quickly take action inareas of concern. By simplifying the system’sarchitecture, Manigent has empowered theorganisation to easily obtain “one version ofthe truth” using base data derived from acontrolled source and presented via a versatileonline performance reporting portal. Duringthis project, Manigent consultants appliedtheir experience of CorVu products to buildon the existing skills of the Corporate Supportstaff in using CorBusiness and HyperVu tomaximise the investment in these products.

Each user of the system received in-depthtraining and understood how to get the mostout of the new data layer. Manigent finishedthe project leaving behind a solid foundationof in-house knowledge. Manigent alsoutilised its CorVu expertise to provideadditional CorVu training, expandingawareness of features and functionality andproviding new skills that would help staff tomake the most of the system. The systemnow offers the best of both worlds, using thepowerful reporting ability of CorVu with thefunctionality of Microsoft products to delivera user-friendly responsive system.

A Standard, Consistent & User-Friendly InterfaceManigent significantly improved the reporting system’s user interface, leveragingMicrosoft Office SharePoint Services 2007. This solution exploits style guides to providea consistent experience for users. This has improved navigation of Greater ManchesterFire & Rescue’s reporting system and facilitated rapid response to user demands. Pagescan be redesigned quickly, links and explanatory text can be added, and additionalreports can be inserted as necessary.

Several standard reports have been deployed,built with a consistent, template-based layoutand colour scheme. These reports are visuallysimilar to the previous reports, but are muchfaster to display as navigable web pages withaccompanying information that facilitatesbetter understanding of the informationpresented. For example, additional corporatesupport reports and documentation can beincluded alongside the incident reports tocreate a true portal for the delivery ofperformance reporting services for GreaterManchester Fire & Rescue.

A Powerful SolutionManigent cost-effectively and sustainably redeveloped Greater Manchester Fire &Rescue Authority’s business intelligence system to maximise ease of use, flexibility andthe power of data management and ad-hoc reporting.

“I found Manigent’sconsultantsoutstanding. Theirknowledge ofCorBusiness and SQLServer was excellentbut they also had anextraordinary ability tounderstand ourrequirements andtranslate them intoeasy-to-usetechnology solutions…Manigent really didan exceptional jobfor us”

Paul Sharples,Head of Corporate

Support

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue8

117 Waterloo Road

London SE1 8UL

T: +44 (0)20 7921 0022

E: info@manigent.com

W: www.manigent.com

About Manigent

Manigent is a different type of consultancy, one that bridges the gap between traditional management consultancies and technology vendors. We are a specialist performance and risk management consultancy delivering integrated business and technology solutions. Through the combination of our thought-leadership approach, risk-based performance and unique software application StratexPoint, we are able to reduce our clients’ project costs by, on average 20%, whilst improving the achievement of performance targets, reducing riskrelated losses and improving the cost and allocation of capital.For more information about Manigent, visit www.manigent.com

CorVu, CorBusiness and HyperVu are trademarks of Rocket Software Inc.