The Royal New Zealand Plunket Society provides a health, development and wellbeing service to every child in the country, dedicating themselves to setting tamariki on the path of wellness during their first 1000 days. Like many non-profit organisations, Plunket has been focusing in recent years on the essential roles of technology and information.

Sharing the knowledge

The data Plunket collects has a real flow-on effect – the more they know about tamariki attending appointments, the better they can map outcomes to conditions and demographic situations, the more they can help.

But it’s not just about knowledge management – the business intelligence and analytics across the top are vital for future planning. They take the collective knowledge and apply it to 800 nurses across the country, predicting what’s going to start happening for the segments of the community they can see, and working to improve long-term outcomes for tamariki.

Using data and analytics, Plunket aims to predict every child’s likelihood of various health, social and environmental outcomes. This is not only a great result for children but also has long-term ramifications for whānau and the community as a whole.

Imagine if you could prevent someone from going to prison or ending up in long-term hospital care because you intervened very early on, thanks to prospective issue indicators? That not only changes the life path of the individual but positively affects the community they belong to – and saves millions of dollars in the process.

Plunket’s partnership with Stellar Consulting

Achieving that sort of return on investment doesn’t happen overnight. Plunket chose Stellar because of the alignment in mindset and objectives.

“I partnered with Stellar because they have a very strategic mindset. They understand the long-term objective and take it into account when calculating where they can add value. There’s a whole bunch of small steps to get to the big strategic goals, but the work we’re doing enables nurses to do more, faster, and with greater compassion because of the understanding we’re creating.” – Mike Rankin, Head of Business Intelligence, Plunket.

By looking at the digital transformation needed and breaking it down into small steps, Stellar equipt nurses with tools that greatly improved their ability to respond quickly to potential issues with care and understanding.

“Stellar worked with stakeholders to understand how Plunket’s operations functioned, what data was available and what would add the most value for their purposes,” says Stellar senior consultant Jason Campbell.

“We initially created a prototype dashboard using Microsoft Power BI, bringing the necessary data straight out of a SQL Server data mart. This only reflected the data from a single source system, however. Once the prototype was approved, Plunket provided the code to merge data from the two main source systems that were necessary to provide a complete picture.”

The resulting solution uses SQL Server, Integration Services and SharePoint to provide daily refreshed data to a dashboard accessible through Power BI.

‘The solution highlights metrics and context that enables Plunket to better manage staff caseloads and delivery performance,” says Jason. “It enables them to make sure that crucial child milestones are met in time and assists staff to more efficiently plan appointments with clients.”

Plunket has also worked with Stellar on a dashboard for frontline engagement, with Stellar delivering a great-looking and informative solution that makes life so much easier for Plunket nurses.

It’s been a successful start for Plunket’s long digital journey, but the BI and analytics devised by the team at Stellar Consulting means the future for New Zealand’s children is already looking brighter.

Umbrellar might be NZ’s leading cloud solution provider, but we know it’s only through the power of partnership that we’re able to deliver the tech you’ll need for tomorrow’s world. Visit Stellar’s Partner page to find out more about New Zealand’s largest team of dedicated Business Intelligence experts.