Client Profile

Customer Name: CCEA

Established: 1994

Customer Since: 2017

Employees: 320

Sector: Public Sector

The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment (CCEA) is a Non-departmental public body of the Department of Education in Northern Ireland.

CCEA was established on 1 April 1994 under the Educational and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1993. It replaced the Northern Ireland Curriculum Council (NICC) and the Northern Ireland Schools Examinations and Assessment Council (NISEAC).

Key Challenges

Identifying Key Challenges

After a meeting with the CEO of the Council of Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) a reliance on paper-based reports was discovered which satisfied current requirements but did not allow for trend analysis and identification.

  • Users were dependent on paper reports and were manually tallying data
  • Social media reporting was carried out in isolation and wider trends may not have been considered
  • Each reporting area was very much in isolation and wider trends could not be analysed

Alongside traditional datasets, the CCEA Marketing and Communication team were keen to have an integrated solution so that they could view information across all social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, Mailchimp and Google Analytics) in one dashboard.

Solution

Adopting an Agile Approach

Version 1 adopted an Agile Business Intelligence implementation approach, understanding what the existing business problems were and analysing the quality of the current data.

Key Features of this approach:

  • Mobilisation: Agreed scope and stakeholders
  • Capture As-Is: Understood the current business reporting, with feedback from the customer about the quality of these
  • Assess and Design To-Be: Undertook a number of workshops to define and document the vision and undertook gap analysis
  • Development: Based on the agreed vision we created an Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) program and integrated the key business systems. This involved API interaction with the social media sites
  • Testing: Worked alongside the business to test the data

Real Differences…

…Delivered.

All users in CCEA now have consistent and regular reporting with the ability to view the data that impacts their role at an operational and strategic level. The ability for the marketing team to evaluate social media performance throughout the year meant that they could alter their approach at different times in the year. Other datasets are being considered which will add value to the existing QlikView applications and ultimately drive efficiencies throughout the organisation.

Key Outcomes:

  • A consolidated social media dashboard so that key timelines could be analysed across all media
  • Over 1,000 user sessions per month including usage by the CEO and operational staff
  • Users now have the ability to drill down and identify trends about awards, units and candidates
  • An additional set of projects to bring other key CCEA into QlikView