Accord Housing Association is a family of organisations which share similar values and objectives. The Accord Group’s vision is one in which people have more choice about their homes, the services they receive, and where people can be involved in developing their communities. It is a future where quality is being continuously improved.
Headed up by Celia Davis, the Performance and Quality Team works across the Accord Group to build and develop a series of performance dashboards used to display key performance information to help manage performance.
One of our aims is to ensure that our customers are central to the Group’s approach and that services are efficient, effective and provide value for money. Part of our team’s role involves providing training, guidance and best practice on producing and presenting performance information in a range of dashboards including the Resident Dashboard and the Housing Corporation dashboard.
We have worked closely with managers, staff and residents to streamline the performance information which is produced. We then developed a set of ‘key business drivers’ to ensure that this information was made easily accessible to everyone – from Directors to staff to residents – on a regular basis, and in a format that could be easily understood.
Sarah Knott, Team Leader
Having selected and Implemented SAP Crystal Dashboard Design, initial training was carried out by DSCallards, which enabled Accord to understand the basic functionality. Accord has since called upon technical support from DSCallards on a number of occasions to help overcome stumbling blocks in the development of their dashboards.
Although we still have work which we would like to do to continue to develop the dashboards, we would not have reached the point we are at now without the technical support and assistance which we have received from DSCallards. Once the initial dashboard had been set up, the process of uploading the information has been relatively simple. Following the recent upgrade, we took the decision to sign up for the technical support package with DSCallards, in order to continue to develop our range of dashboards.
Sarah Knott, Team Leader
By splitting the dashboard in half, Accord are able to show ‘snap-shot’ performance information for a number of KPIs through the use of gauges, vertical sliders and value boxes at the bottom of the canvas, whilst at the top of the dashboard they show more detailed information about individual KPIs through the use of combination charts selected by the user from a ‘Combo box’ menu.
This more detailed view of each KPI allows Accord to show month by month performance trends mapped against targets and benchmarking information where available as well as ‘At a glance’ information from last year, last quarter, last month and current performance.
In addition we use the dashboard to ‘project’ how we need to perform over the next three months in order to meet our targets and better our performance. Our residents also chose the combination chart option to display performance information to them on the intranet as they felt that these charts were clear and easy to understand
Sarah Knott, Team Leader
Finally, Accord use dynamic visibility to allow the user to select to view ‘Performance’ or ‘Areas for Concern’. In their areas for concern screen they show detail of any KPIs which are not performing satisfactorily, along with actions that are being taken to rectify performance. This allows them to relate the quantitative information displayed on the dashboard to qualitative performance management to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Accord submit that the strengths of the SAP® Crystal Dashboard Design implementation are as follows:
