Surrey County Council: Better Business Intelligence with Help from SAP Enterprise Support

Organization Surrey County Council Location Surrey, United Kingdom Industry, products, and services Public sector services Revenue 1.6 billion ( 1.88 billion) Web site www.surreycc.gov.uk World-class service delivered with efficiency In the summer, the pools are open. In the winter, the streets get plowed. Throughout the year, children go to school and the elderly get the care they need. And when it comes to preserving the environment and unique character of Surrey County, England just a stone s throw away from London the people who live and work there know that they re in good hands. This is because Surrey County Council is on the job, supported by SAP software. SAP solution and services SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform, SAP Enterprise Support services, SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council For 125 years, Surrey County Council has been providing the services that people depend on to make life better. From schools, libraries, and fire departments to public health, highway maintenance, and economic development, the council delivers services to more than 1.1 million citizens on a daily basis. Surrey is the fifth-largest county council in England, employing more than 26,000 staff members who are responsible for delivering these services across a vast range of areas. The top priority is achieving the highest levels of service quality. And while the citizen always comes first, Surrey also knows that it must deliver its services in an efficient manner that conserves precious resources resources that can then be poured back into the communities it serves. All of this requires streamlined processes, ready access to information, and a lot of insight delivered on a daily basis. To achieve these objectives, Surrey has depended on SAP software for more than a decade. Read more 2 / 6 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

An intelligent approach to monitoring business intelligence As part of a nationwide initiative to improve government efficiency in England, Surrey has been taking steps to realize across-the-board savings of 30%. Many of these savings have focused on IT improvements, which is where Tahiana Jefferis comes into the picture. Jefferis, who runs the SAP competency center at Surrey, has been pursuing projects to optimize operations, including multiple system upgrades that are still ongoing. Already, her group has achieved dramatic results, such as cutting custom transactions and reports by 60% and reducing the runtime for specific processes from 30 hours to just 10 minutes. The group has also streamlined payroll processing by 98% and saved 100,000 through better financial intelligence reporting. While these achievements are significant, Surrey is always on the lookout for new opportunities to improve. In this vein, it recently implemented the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) platform to generate more insight into its business processes. To help ensure quality monitoring for this platform, Surrey decided to link it up with the SAP Solution Manager application management solution. Once upgrades are completed, this will enable the organization to receive automatic alerts regarding system status. These alerts will be sent directly to an in-box so that IT can respond immediately. To move forward on this front, Surrey participated in the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council in 2013, focusing on operational innovation for analytics. 98% Improvement in payroll processing 3 / 6 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Individualized attention and a focus on innovation The SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council is a unique co-innovation opportunity in which customers come together with experts from the SAP Active Global Support organization to codevelop new SAP services. These services enable customers to overcome challenges on the road to innovation. Collaborating through specific focus areas, or work streams, companies get the individualized attention they need to address their unique circumstances while SAP gets the feedback it needs to fine-tune its portfolio of service offerings. The SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council is ideal for meeting our needs on our terms, says Jefferis. The emphasis is on coming together to address a particular issue, always focused on what s particular to our own circumstances. And the outcome is always one that advances us toward our goal. As a long-time customer of SAP, Surrey also sees the value of the advisory council in the context of the many other services available as part of its SAP Enterprise Support agreement. As an organization, Surrey County Council prides itself on delivering the best possible services at the best value, says Jefferis. With SAP Enterprise Support, we feel like the same ethos is reflected back at us. This time we re the customer, and SAP is doing everything it can to meet our needs. With a focus on getting the most out of its new implementation of the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform, Surrey dove into the activities of the advisory council with enthusiasm. 4 / 6 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Expertise and responsiveness Activities commenced with an expert-guided implementation to walk through the configuration of alerts. During this phase, a broken link was discovered that prevented some alert data from appearing in the designated in-box. To resolve this issue, SAP arranged for an on-site visit from another SAP expert who examined the situation and provided a fix. SAP also delivered a meet-the-expert session over the phone to further familiarize the team with the alert setup. By transferring knowledge and addressing issues specific to the Surrey environment, this session is expected to help drive user adoption so that the organization can better realize the value of its investment. During the course of the engagement, Surrey and SAP also identified some performance issues with Surrey s deployment of the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform. To pinpoint the causes, SAP analyzed Surrey s general report design and system architecture. The result was a report that clearly outlines bottleneck issues in Surrey s environment a report that Surrey will use to optimize performance moving forward. Delivered as part of the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, this performance analysis service was fine-tuned through a collaborative effort between SAP experts and Surrey s IT group. Since then, the service has been commercialized as the SAP Business Process Performance Optimization service now available to all customers of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. With SAP Enterprise Support, we re never alone. We always get the attention we need. Tahiana Jefferis, SAP Competency Center Manager, Surrey County Council 5 / 6 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

A highly valued partnership Today Surrey has an alert mechanism in place for its SAP BusinessObjects BI platform that will support effective system monitoring allowing IT to detect service issues and respond before they impact the organization. Surrey expects to go live with the system once all upgrade activity is completed. As for its experience with the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, Surrey expects to participate even more in the future. What I like is that it s a very relaxed experience, says Jefferis. The whole engagement takes place over a number of months. You concentrate on a defined issue, and you get all the support and responsiveness required to achieve your goals. What s not to like? Surrey also sees the experience as a way to strengthen an important strategic partnership. Having made a significant investment in SAP software, the organization values its interaction with SAP. The focus is always on driving more value, says Jefferis. SAP views us as a valued customer, and it shows. Moving forward, Surrey is looking to use SAP Solution Manager for a more streamlined and integrated approach to incident management. It also wants to attain SAP certification as a Customer Center of Expertise organization, which will serve as a sign of process maturity and best-practice utilization. Based on its experiences so far, Surrey County Council should find the support it needs with SAP Enterprise Support. Time and again, SAP Enterprise Support services have helped us improve operations so that we can run more effectively and more efficiently as an organization. For us, the value is unquestionable. Tahiana Jefferis, SAP Competency Center Manager, Surrey County Council Studio SAP 29184enUS (14/07) 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 6 / 6

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