NSL boosts transparency for key clients

NSL is an outsourced service provider that specialises in on-street parking management, business processing and passenger transport solutions. With its headquarters at Westgate in London, the company employs approximately 5,000 people across the UK, and also operates internationally.

Recently, NSL won a major contract to provide parking enforcement services for a local authority in one of the UK’s largest cities. A significant part of the contract was based around issuing Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) and managing them through a complex workflow.

“The client wanted to outsource back-office processing, but at the same time still wanted to be able to monitor a number of key performance indicators so that they could make sure we were meeting the agreed service levels, and also drill down into the data to perform more detailed analyses,” explains Teresa Farndon, Head of IT at NSL.

At the time of winning the back-office processing contract, NSL was already using a solution called Si-Dem from Spur Information Systems to manage similar processes for other clients. NSL was confident that Si-Dem could meet the client’s needs from the operational perspective; but in order to provide the level of visibility that the client wanted, NSL wanted to create a new reporting solution.

Finding a solution

Key members of NSL’s IT team had previously worked on several successful projects with change++, an IT consultancy company that specialises in business intelligence and analytics solutions from a range of vendors. The team decided to consult change++ for advice on how best to design and implement a reporting solution that would integrate with Si-Dem and provide real-time visibility of operational data for the client.

“The change++ team performed a detailed analysis of our requirements and recommended IBM Cognos Business Intelligence,” says Farndon. “What impressed us about Cognos was the ability to provide a single point of access that gives different types of users easy access to the data they need. So our in-house analysts can see the operational information they need at a glance, while users from the client side get a more performance-related view of data.”

Delivering to a tight deadline

The NSL IT team worked with change++ to implement the IBM Cognos solution, integrate it with Si-Dem and develop the required reports within just six months – on time and within budget.

“It was absolutely critical to get the IBM Cognos solution live on schedule,” comments Farndon. “Not unreasonably, the client expected us to have everything up and running from day one of the contract period, so change++ and our in-house team did an excellent job to deliver on time. During the project we built a very close relationship with change++, and we came to see them as a true partner, not just a supplier. We even allowed them to provide Cognos training direct to our client, which shows how much trust we were prepared to place in them.”

Quicker, easier reporting

With the IBM Cognos solution in place, NSL has been able to streamline its reporting team from five full-time employees to just two, enabling the other employees to focus on higher-value activities.

“We used to create monthly reports based on spreadsheets,” explains Farndon. “Even collecting and checking the data was a considerable effort – using up a lot of time that could have been spent more profitably on actual analysis. Moreover, the client reporting team faced similar issues. Anecdotally, I know that one of the client’s reports used to take a week to assemble – whereas now they can just log into Cognos and generate the same report with a few mouse-clicks.”

The client’s feedback on the Cognos solution has been very positive, and NSL has already begun offering access to Cognos to its other clients as a value-add service.

“The ability to offer self-service reporting and real-time analysis for performance management is a real differentiator in our industry,” says Farndon. “We expect many of our other clients to be interested in this offering, and it may also help us win business from new clients in the future.”

Looking to the future

The successful introduction of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence for PCN reporting has also encouraged NSL to think about ways to leverage business analytics in other parts of the company. One possible project for the near future is to extend the Cognos environment to enhance reporting and analysis for the company’s internal financial systems.

“Business intelligence is addictive: once you start seeing the results, you realise that there are lots of other areas in which the same sort of analytics could really help the business,” concludes Farndon. “Moreover, by extending the solution, we will gain even more value from our investment in the Cognos software.”