reducing development costs
“We found that it took minimal development time to produce a
complete suite of financial reports to add further value to the
information we hold. Just as important, perhaps, there was no
expensive maintenance involved when the underlying data
changed for any reason.”
The modelling capabilities of Monarch
are proving invaluable in the Trust’s cash
flow planning, allowing the impact of
external factors to be assessed. The UK
Treasury has imposed a 10-day limit on
payments by Government departments
to its suppliers – except (at present) the
NHS which has been excluded on
grounds of its scale.
Were the measure to be implemented
in the health sector at any stage, there
could be a serious impact on the liquidity
multiple systems, but the saving on de- in each financial period. But the Trust of PCTs whose suppliers include other NHS
velopment costs in this instance would needed to be able to factor into its budg- tiers and third parties.
not have been significant given the ex- ets the annual cost increases which “Apart from showing us how well we are
pertise required to write and maintain would have to be met. meeting our present payment targets,
the routines which bring all of that data “While the percentage increases are Monarch can predict accurately how much
to a common denominator format capa- known, it would have taken a further re- additional liquidity would be required as
ble of being merged. port to marry up the information with the we moved progressively from the present
current salaries data from ESR.” payment terms towards the ten-day fig-
Experience of report mining
ure. The Strategic Health Authority ap-
pears to have been impressed with the
There was another approach – report
Data modelling within Monarch
quality of information made available.”
mining – which Lee McMahon had first An important feature of Monarch is that
encountered in a previous post within it supports data modelling and is there-
the NHS. “The requirements for drawing fore able to absorb these ‘flat’ files and
Delivering to stakeholders
together the output from multiple IT sys- produce very simply the projections re- Important though Monarch has been in
tems were very similar. A colleague at quired alongside the multi-sourced fi- extracting the information needed from
my previous employers had introduced nancial reports. the transactional systems in place at
me to Monarch from Datawatch. “We found that it took minimal devel- Bury since it was installed in 2004, Mr
“By extracting information from reports, opment time to produce a complete suite McMahon has so far made no reference
rather than from the databases which gen- of financial reports to add further value to how the system delivers its ‘conclu-
erated them, Monarch was able to sim- to the information we hold. sions’ to the stakeholders.
plify the process of collating this into the “Just as important, perhaps, there was Does the functionality within Monarch
kind of reports that we needed to run the no expensive maintenance involved mean that the ‘intelligence’ it produces
operation effectively.” when the underlying data changed for is immediately available only to the
McMahon developed that point. “A any reason. trained users, who in turn produce the
problem had been that the systems in “Our stakeholders are able to use in- management and SHA reports?
place could not provide the reports that formation that would not be available The product’s specification clearly in-
our budget holders needed to make the as rapidly and cost-effectively if we were dicates that it can export reports directly
most effective decisions on their future not using Monarch: working directly into Microsoft Excel format, allowing in-
strategy. with the raw data would take three to formation to be distributed readily to any
“As an illustration, the payroll system four days to manipulate it into a report, executive with access to that ubiquitous
reports only on the actual costs incurred for example.” desktop tool.
By extracting information from reports, rather than from the databases which generated them, Monarch
was able to simplify the process of collating this into the kind of reports needed to run the operation effectively.
56
56
The Informed Executive
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