Now that BIRDS has been implemented and the first users have been trained, the intention is for more and more people to work with Power BI. Van der Spek explains: 'The core users are extremely enthusiastic. They are eager to transfer their knowledge to the rest of the organisation. So the adoption is going very well. We have an Office 365 environment that also includes Teams. This is a relevant source of information for us and Power BI has become an important part of this. This enables us to share our reports directly with our management, managers and project management'. According to Muit, the rollout of BI across the entire organisation is easier because Power BI is a multi-device solution. 'The great thing about Power BI is that it is location- and platform-independent. So we can consult the data with any device - laptop, iPad or telephone. This makes a good contribution to the development of management information at De Vries en Verburg'.
After the technical implementation, the team of core users at De Vries en Verburg received training to master BIRDS and Power BI. 'First Hillstar completed the implementation and then introduced us to the dashboards and the BIRDS solution. This gave us good insight into 'who gets what responsibility'. In this way, we also composed the SLA with Hillstar,' says Muit.
What plans are there for the future?
BIRDS for 4PS Construct provides a standard set of reports within the 4PS environment. In order to get a more complete picture of the organisation, multiple sources are often brought together in BIRDS. There, all data is structured in such a way that it can easily be visualised within Power BI. At De Vries en Verburg they are also working on a step to bring more data together. Van der Spek explains: 'We also want to link BIRDS to our HRM environment. This means that you can then offer financial, operational and HRM-related information to the board, management and project management in a single overview'.
'The second part is the accessibility of HOOMCTRL via Power BI. Communication with private customers who buy a home (buyer guidance) is largely via HOOMCTRL of 4PS. This gives us a lot of information that we can analyse, such as the choices people make, additional work, material choices, and so on. That gives us useful information and feedback towards new projects'. Muit adds: 'On the other hand, we expect that the broad implementation in the organisation will also result in more and more questions from colleagues and that we will also be able to provide them with more and more information'.
About BIRDS
The implementation at De Vries en Verburg is a good example of a modern construction organisation that steers on data. This way of working is supported by the standard Power BI reports that are automatically filled via BIRDS. BIRDS is a solution that collects, cleans and prepares data from various sources for visualisation. Because this fits 1 on 1 on the 4PS database, BIRDS delivers a complete set of deployable reports in Power BI after a short implementation. As a user, you have immediate access to 4PS reports such as Projects, Projects, Service & Maintenance and Equipment. Sales, Purchase, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger and Stock are also supplied as standard.
