How high is your BI? How to improve business intelligence

St John Ambulance Western Australia went through a big learning curve regarding its business intelligence when it made its first acquisition in primary health care a few weeks ago. It did so with the comfort of information provided by its upgraded enterprise performance management (EPM) system.

St John Ambulance started in WA in the 1890s and had been looking at avenues for growth and identified an opportunity in the primary healthcare market. Its acquisition of Apollo Health brought four primary health clinics across the Perth metropolitan area into its business, allowing the organisation to expand beyond emergency care through an expanded business model that included alternative care pathways that could help keep patients out of emergency departments.

The non-profit organisation had been using an earlier version of an on-premise EPM system, but with all the opportunities it had to consider, “we needed to get our systems up to speed,” says Finance and Administration Director Antony Smithson.

St John knew it wanted a cloud-based system. The organisation covers all of Western Australia, with the state being the largest area in the world covered by a single ambulance service, and now staff working remotely have the same access as those in Perth. Having staff distributed over many locations also meant it needed an EPM system that was easy for its employees to use.

Smithson wanted a system that was scalable, could be accessed remotely, and was intuitive, so work wasn’t held up because someone had to be contacted for an answer. It had to be flexible enough to adapt to St John’s business structure as it was looking to evolve its business model and have the ability to measure and model any acquisition.

Oracle EPM Cloud has given the business units more commercial insight, allocating costs across the units so staff have a greater understanding of the business drivers. Information is available across the business, and allows St John’s executives and board members to gain a wider understanding of how actions affect other parts of its organisation.

“It gave us clarity,” says Smithson. “We could have one conversation that was accessible across the whole of the organisation.”

Smithson can run more ratios and combine financial with operational data. St John provides over 245,000 first aid courses a year. The visibility EPM grants, enables the company to determine break even on class sizes and revenue per student.

“It does change behaviour,” he says. “People think about the whole cost implications of the decision they are making, not just the ones affecting them. This changes our approach towards planning and allows us to think about ways we can reinvest our surpluses to better serve our charitable purpose.”

Smithson’s advice to business owners evaluating an EPM solution is to do your research and planning beforehand, and not to underestimate the time this will take.

When hiring consultants, ask how many implementations they have done, for what type of organisation and of what size?

What level of support and access will be provided?

What is the firm’s ongoing commitment to the product?

Find more information on Oracle’s solutions here