An important tool in Ale municipality's digitization

 

Digitizing an operations is a continuous challenge that Sweden's municipalities are grappling with. In this customer case, we talk to Ken Gunnesson, financial manager and deputy municipal manager in Ale municipality, about how they chose INSIKT as their tool for analysis and planning.

Ken-Ale-kommun-large

How did you work at Ale municipality before INSIKT?


- We had no BI system in Ale and the entire IT environment was quite outdated when it came to the financial applications. We were a so-called municipal data customer who had most of the systems from Visma and worked in what is called Budget and Prognos (the Bop) and other systems before INSIKT. We also worked in Excel, which we sometimes still do. These systems were not exactly user-friendly, it was never the case that managers themselves entered the systems such as the financial system, but instead they depended on the controllers.

- We never really got some systems to work either, which meant that we had some problems that could never be solved. It didn't work well, there were no updates and fields disappeared. We also worked a lot manually and didn't really have any output, neither from HR nor from the operational systems. That was one reason why I started thinking that we must have a real BI tool in the municipality when I started at Ale

What are the advantages of a BI-tool?

- We have everything gathered in one place. So far, we have only entered finances and HR and personnel data in INSIKT. The idea is to get information both from community building, social services and education and more, but it depends a lot on the sectors themselves to enable the advantage of having everything in one place. This way, we can also make the information more public.

Why did you choose INSIKT?

- I have done this a few times before, among other things when I was part of the steering group at Gothenburg City in their entire system change. Ale municipality made a procurement and had a solid requirement specification and that one of the basic conditions was that all operational data from the operational system should not enter the financial system, but we wanted an independent BI tool. It would be disconnected and give an overall picture. When we then started to look around and do some surveillance, I happened to see you when we were down at "KOMMEK" a few years ago with Visma. You were there and showed INSIKT and we felt that there is a good system here.

Ken further explains how they compared several systems but that INSIKT stood out in the combination of ease of use and flexibility in comparison to the others.

- You can do a lot yourself in INSIKT, without it being administratively expensive or financially expensive to have it. We obviously need some help from you anyway because of things we can't do regardless of if we had the skills, but it was still the flexibility that cemented the choice. For us, it was not crucial to have great municipal competence, but the most important thing was to be able to handle complex issues - I looked at your other customers and thought that if you can solve it for them, you can solve it for us.

What is the best thing about INSIKT?

- It's the flexibility. We have a number of ready-made reports that you can pivot and easily change in. In other systems there is a pivoting that is fixed, the analysis reports are then often fixed, of course it is possible to sort, exclude and reverse a little, but not quite in the same way way. In INSIKT, you can build your own summaries and do much more if you are a little skilled. What I think is the biggest advantage of INSIKT is that it is easy to use and that you can work with budget and forecast while you have the analysis up in another tab. We also have connections to Stratsys where we transfer both personnel data and financial data without having to register it yourself.

"What I think is the biggest advantage of INSIKT is that it is easy to use and that you can work with budget and forecast while you have the analysis up in another tab."

Ken Gunnesson
Ale municipality

What feature do you use the most and why?

- I mostly use the analysis part of INSIKT, except when we make budgets or forecasts. I make my own forecasts and for that I use the Planning module in INSIKT. On a daily basis, however, it is the Analysis part that I am in and looking at. I have a few reports that I am in and looking at and sometimes I tend to twist and turn the report if there is something specific I am interested in. Sometimes it can be that I see a deviation in something and think about what it actually consists of, then I can delve deeper into the accounts or make a selection that has a larger perspective on the municipality and see how it looks over time. I can see deviations and think "Does it usually look like this?" and can then look at how it has looked in previous months or compare with the previous year.

Why should a minucipality choose INSIKT?

- I think INSIKT is a flexible system that fits well and is able to cope with municipal operations. You get a lot for the money you pay and within the municipality we want to be efficient with resource utilization and INSIKT gives us good conditions for that.

Do like Ale municipality - take control of your data.