Using Business Intelligence Tools to Strengthen County Management

About the Program

Category: County Administration and Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

In response to a strong desire to transform County government to a data-driven operation, where decision-making is framed by evidence-based practice, the Performance Management team assembled a project to employ business intelligence tools to better distribute usable information to managers in departments. A first step was to identify a business intelligence tool that was easy to use and wouldn’t be cost prohibitive. PowerPivot, a free add-on to Microsoft Excel, was identified as a self-service product that would allow users to more easily analyze, mine and report against data in varied formats and locations. We implemented PowerPivot which works on top of Microsoft Excel and expands the capabilities of our average County worker by leveraging existing skill sets for the purpose of increasing knowledge about data to ultimately improve performance.