Increasing standards and driving performance through unified data

00:00:10I am Giuseppe Motta, the Director of Planning & Management Control at KOS Group. KOS operates in the health and personal care sector and aims to be a leading innovator and provider of personalized, high-quality services, working in tandem with public health authorities. Established in 2002, KOS has a turnover in excess of €450 million and operates through dedicated brands. The Italian Anni Azzurri brand is a leader in the treatment and care of elderly patients through a multi-regional network of high-quality residential services and manages around 5,000 beds. The Santo Stefano brand – one of the key Italian players in the rehabilitation industry - is dedicated to functional rehabilitation for problems stemming from various diseases including severe post-coma brain injuries. Medipass is the brand through which the KOS Group offers integrated, high-tech healthcare services (both in private and public hospitals), including diagnosis and therapy, comprehensive management of technology facilities and outsourcing of outpatient diagnosis.

00:01:22How do you use Board? We began to use Board in management and operational reports, gradually extending it to other reporting areas until it eventually covered all our reporting needs. We then moved on to building applications for budgeting, planning, and forecasting processes. Board has supported KOS throughout a period of growth that is still ongoing.

KOS currently has around 120-130 users working on Board, including around 50 in the areas of administration, finance and control. With its workflow management capability, Board has accelerated our reporting creation and analysis processes.

Another application of Board that has brought great improvements to KOS is the Balanced Scorecard, which combines data from different management systems, from budgetary data for economic and financial tasks to personnel management data for the human resources department. Being a group with a workforce in excess of 5,000 employees it is vital for us to make decisions based on human resource KPIs. Thanks to Board we can leverage our data within a unified environment, with a consistent and shared logical structure. We are now equipped with a screen that includes various dashboards displaying around a dozen indicators, which are designed to monitor and guide the objectives of the individual directors and the operational units scattered throughout the territories.

00:03:10Why was there a need for a new software solution? Since we are distributed throughout many different geographic areas and have acquired several facilities, it was necessary to combine sets of fragmented data from different sources and databases into a single structured and logically ordered environment.

00:03:33Which main Board features stood out to you? The main characteristic that led KOS to opt for Board was the autonomy, especially with regard to the planning and control department, through which the management staff were able to drive the project implementation, and the solution’s flexibility which allowed us to easily design tailored reports and workflows based precisely on the ideas of the management and directors, without needing to know specific programming languages.

00:04:11Can you describe the benefits Board has brought to your organization? Board has made everything much more orderly. Now we can focus a lot more on analysis and simulation and have introduced a continuous benchmarking process, creating value for the entire organization. The group’s information assets have actually increased because all the reports are managed within a single interactive environment, avoiding the issues of spreadsheet proliferation.

Board has allowed us to carry out analysis, planning and simulations within a single environment that has a single consistent logic, based on common algorithms. This allows us to manage and compare data in the same way for the whole group. The weekly or monthly report that ends up on the Managing Director’s desk is formulated using the same methods as the report used by the director of each health facility or hospital.

Taking advantage of reliable, validated data in a timely manner, the management of KOS can make informed decisions that create added value for customers and partners.