A New Era of Data-Driven Decisions: New Zealand Department of Corrections Empowers its HR Department with a Modern Data Warehouse

Keeping the community safe is a top priority for the New Zealand Department of Corrections, and managing the rehabilitation of offenders within its 17 prisons requires a wealth of data and insights. With over 7,500 incarcerated individuals and 30,000 community sentences, the HR department had a tall order to fill. The department was looking for a solution that could streamline their reporting processes and provide them with real, reliable, and accurate data.

By partnering with Zentrix, the New Zealand Department of Corrections has revolutionized the way they do reporting. Zentrix, a data and analytics company specialises in helping organizations extract data from SAP into modern data warehouses, making it easier to access and analyse. With Zentrixs’ expertise, the HR department was able to establish their own data warehouse where they had autonomy and real-time access to the information they needed to make informed decisions. The results were truly exceptional. The Department saw huge time and cost savings building reports and dashboards, and their perception and use of data was completely transformed.

Problem

Prior to partnering with Zentrix, the New Zealand Department of Corrections was facing significant challenges in its data management process. The finance and HR teams struggled with manual data imports from SAP and complex, time-consuming reports produced in Excel. This not only took up valuable time and resources but also produced inaccurate data that wasn’t insightful enough to drive key business decisions.

Recognizing the need for change, the Director of Data Services at the New Zealand Department of Corrections, Brian Nicholas, set out on a mission to find a solution that would simplify the reporting process and produce valuable business insights.

I said ‘search the world and find a product that will enable us to do what we want to do’, and that is how we found Zentrix
Brian Nicholas, New Zealand Department of Corrections Director of Data Services

Adopting a “Do it once and do it properly” mindset, the New Zealand Department of Corrections implemented Zentrix solutions to streamline their reporting process and empower their teams with insightful, accurate data. This proved especially valuable during the pandemic and vaccination roll-out, when the HR department needed to quickly forecast staffing levels with a six-day deadline. Thanks to the Zentrix platform, Brian’s team was able to build and roll out a staff forecasting solution, giving the HR team visibility into critical information, and freeing up valuable time and resources.

Solution

Zentrix provided the New Zealand Department of Corrections with a comprehensive solution to their data management challenges. By using Zentrix Data Integration tools, the department was able to extract critical data from SAP and integrate it into a centralized data warehouse. This paved the way for the creation of world-class Power BI reports and dashboards that have become a critical tool for the organization.

With Zentrix, the time-consuming and complex reporting processes are now a thing of the past. Brian’s team was able to create reports that were both effective and user-friendly, freeing up valuable time and resources in the process. One of the most widely used reports developed is the organization hierarchy, which provides real-time HR data from SAP and displays key information such as employee positions, managers, delegations, staff leave, role type, and more.

Thanks to the Zentrix platform, the New Zealand Department of Corrections has transformed the way they use data to inform their decisions. With reports that used to take five hours to run now instantaneous using Power BI, the department can rely on accurate, insightful data to make critical business decisions. And with upwards of 1,000 people relying on the organization chart, the department has never been more efficient or effective in their data management process.

Outcomes

The implementation of Zentrixs’ solution at the New Zealand Department of Corrections has had a profound impact on the way the finance and HR teams work. The integration of the SAP data into a single, centralized data warehouse has allowed for improved accuracy, consistency, and confidence in the data.

The ease of use and speed at which the Power BI reports and dashboards can be created has been a game changer for the teams. Reports that used to take hours to produce are now generated instantly, freeing up time and resources for more valuable tasks.

The support and guidance provided by Zentrix during the upgrade from SAP ECC to S/4 HANA was critical in ensuring that there was no downtime for the New Zealand Department of Corrections. The teams knew they had access to forward-thinking, fast-acting SAP specialists and could rely on Zentrix for support. The company continues to work with the New Zealand Department of Corrections as a key technology partner for SAP reporting and analytics.