Monteray

New Performance Management System Helps Run 8,000 BuildingsThe task of managing the 8,000 British Telecom buildings throughout the UK is a huge one.

Taking responsibility for every detail, right down to testing fire alarms and making sure all the lifts are working falls to a Bedford-based organisation - Monteray.

The company, which was formed expressly to provide this Facilities Management service as part of a major outsourcing operation, works to very stringent performance targets and faces financial penalties should it not deliver.

Each month Monteray has to report back to BT against some 20 Key Performance Indicators. Failure on any one means financial penalties. This demands a level of performance management over and above the day-to-day operation of such a far-reaching operation.

Not only does Monteray operate a planned schedule of work, from building maintenance to ensuring the legal requirements of Health & Safety are met, but it also runs a call centre to which building occupants report any problems which might occur.

Together these generate nearly 500,000 work orders a year spread across five Regional Service Providers.

Half of the information needed for the monthly performance reports to BT comes from the company's operational systems but the rest used to have to be sorted manually by each regional centre which was proving an enormous strain.

"Failure on any one Key Performance Indicator means financial penalty, Explains Sandra Mobbs, Performance Management System, Project Manager for Monteray.

"The level of abatement is calculated using a complicated polynomial expression and putting all this information together each month was becoming extremely difficult and time-consuming."

"We needed a new management system which was user-friendly, would work via our existing web server and which would assist in visually tracking all the Key Performance Indicators."

That new system is a Performance Management System using Cognos Series 7 Enterprise BI and Microsoft Access established by Monteray with the help of the leading UK Business Intelligence (BI) consultants, Simpson Associates.

This system has cut significantly the time spent throughout Monteray in preparing the monthly pack for BT.

It has also been designed by Simpson Associates to use traffic lighting and colour coding in PowerPlay reports, which quickly highlight any areas of failing performance so that they can be rectified, ideally, before falling into the BT abatement zone.

To alleviate the strain of reporting on performance criteria which are not within the operational IT system, Simpson Associations devised a Microsoft Access-based application where this information can be stored and then fed in to the overall performance management system Cognos PowerCube.

Key to the success of this project was the ability of Simpson Associates to work alongside Monteray personal providing not only solutions to "hard" technical issues but also training and information sharing.

Simpson Associates has won the Cognos Partner of the Year award four times since 1997. The Manchester-based organisation has developed a unique method of working which is focused on solving problems for business and in ensuring that staff at all levels understand any new IT system and know how to get the best from it.

The company was initially employed by Monteray to help with the automation processes of building a data warehouse to improve the day-to-day reporting systems within the business. Success in this led to the award of the BI contract.

Sandra Mobbs concludes: "It was been a real pleasure to work with the Simpson Associates. Thanks to their help with this project people throughout the Monteray organisation can now rapidly identify any Key Performance Indicators which might not be met and can take immediate action to prevent or, at least minimise financial penalties