Guest article AKDB: New solutions make decisions possible at the touch of a button

Intelligently combined and decision-ready data enables customised reports and eliminates the need for manual analyses, imports and exports. AKDB also develops BI solutions for various areas of local government. Business intelligence is one of the top themes at the AKDB stand at the Smart Country Convention.

Whether in treasuries, town halls or district offices: Business intelligence solutions, i.e. applications that process smart data from strategically placed sensors and specialised processes, are supporting more and more administrations in providing municipal services and shaping the future. They enable municipal decision-makers to optimise the use of resources and make informed decisions based on data. The AKDB is also already developing BI solutions, for example with the products SDS.Control Finance, SDS.Control Inhabitants, SDS.Environment and Climate and SDS.Digital Twin, which make the manual collation of data superfluous.

Optimum data quality for committee meetings

This is particularly crucial in committee meetings: treasurers, for example, spend many hours exporting financial data from the financial software and preparing it in Microsoft Excel. No matter how accurate you are, there are always small discrepancies due to Excel rounding errors. However, these minimal differences regularly cause considerable discussion in meetings of the city council and other committees. There is immense pressure on the treasury department. This is precisely where a business intelligence solution that automates the process of data evaluation and preparation comes in.

Analysing financial data automatically

Treasurers are often faced with the question: How can budgets be compared? How do income and expenditure per inhabitant compare with the previous year? How has the accounting result developed over the financial year? This is where BI solutions such as the SDS.Control Finance module come into play. They make it possible to analyse cameral and double-entry accounting data and soon also the assessment. Predefined standard report sets make it easy to get started; simple visualisations provide a precise overview of information from the areas of budget planning, cash or management.

Keeping an eye on demographic developments

Data is also worth its weight in gold in the area of reporting. This gives decision-makers a compact overview of demographic developments. Of course, this data must be anonymised: it can be data on gender, religious denomination, age group, number of people moving in and out of the municipality. An overview is important for future forecasts: How many daycare places need to be planned for the next few years? How should local public transport be timed? But demographic data is also valuable when it comes to allocating building land. The AKDB's solution in this area is brand new and is called SDS.Control Einwohner.

Data protection is a priority

Such BI modules must offer clear visualisations in reporting, analyses and dashboards. And they must be able to automate many processes and analyses at the touch of a button. It goes without saying that sensitive citizen data must be anonymised and used in compliance with data protection regulations. It must never be possible to draw conclusions about a person. At AKDB, the BI solutions also run in the BSI-certified AKDB data centre. Anyone can use them - regardless of the operating form of the specialised procedure. Other future application scenarios include BI solutions in transport, social services and human resources.
SDS.Control is a solution from the AKDB Group and is part of the Smart Data Services product family.

Meet us at the Smart Country Convention in Hall 25, Stand 402.