The Municipality of Umeå in Northern Sweden needed to build a comprehensive information management system—or “decision-making portal”—that would give city managers visibility into key performance indicators. After evaluating several vendors, municipal leaders selected Microsoft products based on the familiar and intuitive user interface, seamless and cost-effective interoperability with existing Microsoft products, and scalability. 

Business Needs
Efficient social services are a vital component of every municipality in Sweden. To better serve its 114,000 residents, the Municipality of Umeå decided that it wanted to build the best social services offering in the country.

However, municipal leaders realized this objective would require an IT environment that provided state-of-the-art solutions for information sharing, reporting, and data analysis.

We are determined to build the best social services offering in Sweden. With the help of Microsoft products—and the skill of our employees—we are well on the way to achieving this goal. Lennart Malm Financial Director, Social Services Department, Municipality of Umeå

In 2007, the organization lacked a cohesive information management system, which limited the decision-making capabilities of the municipal leadership. “There were different versions of activity statistics and data, which led to deficiencies in our reporting," says Lennart Malm, Financial Director, Social Services Department for the Municipality of Umeå. “A decision-making portal was one of the things we needed—after all, we were dealing with 3,000 employees and about 100 managers."

City leaders envisioned this “decision-making portal” as a comprehensive data management solution that would provide decision makers with visibility into key performance indicators and the ability to generate in-depth reports by department, role, and project.

Solution
To find the right technology, the municipality evaluated solutions from a number of vendors, and ultimately selected Microsoft. Key factors for selecting Microsoft included:

Familiar user interface. "With Microsoft products, we don't need to provide training to the extent that we would with other vendors,” Malm says. “The interfaces are already familiar to employees across the organization.”

Seamless interoperability of Microsoft products for data warehousing, data analysis, and reporting solutions. Because Microsoft products are built to work “better together,” leaders at the social services department knew they would not need to purchase multiple solutions from a variety of vendors—and hope that the products would interoperate. With Microsoft, the solution would be simple.

Scalability. The city plans to deploy the solution to all 3,000 employees in 150 business units across Umeå. Because the city already uses Microsoft products, the implementation is expected to go smoothly.

With the help of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Sogeti, the Municipality of Umeå implemented a solution built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software, and Excel Services, a technology in Office SharePoint Server 2007.

With Excel Services, employees can load, manipulate, and display Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbooks via the Internet using Office SharePoint Server 2007. The SQL Server 2008 data warehouse contains employee schedule information and economic data, while the decision-making portal—accessible through Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Excel Services—provides employees with efficient reporting capabilities and clear presentation of information.

“The major advantage of the Microsoft solution is that the Social Services Department has direct access to the information on which it bases its decisions," says Jonas Osterman, Data Warehouse Architect at Sogeti. “The numbers are accessible as soon as employees log on, and it's easy to compare different activities. The reporting process has become much smoother.”

Benefits
With the Microsoft-based data management solution in place, managers for the Social Services Department in the Municipality of Umeå are now able to:

Efficiently monitor and comment on the results of reports and analyses. The distributed information is customized, depending on who is logged on to the web portal. “We now have the ability to collect information from more than 100 managers in approximately three days,” Malm explains. “This simply was not possible before."

Simplify reporting. Managers are using the solution to simplify the reporting process and free up more time. “In the past, we used several disparate systems to create reports,” Malm says. “With the Microsoft solution, all data is aggregated in one place which makes reporting much faster and easier.”

Compare data from different departments and projects, including role-based presentation of information. “The quality of the output data has definitely improved," says Malm. “This means that we can make more relevant comparisons with other municipalities, which increases the accuracy of our development forecasts. Having this information also improves the quality our on-going dialogues with politicians and other decision makers.”

All these benefits add up to better decision making and better services for the community. “We are determined to build the best social services offering in Sweden,” concludes Malm. “With the help of Microsoft products—and the skill of our employees—we are well on the way to achieving this goal.”

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/casestudies