Streamlined Dashboard Extension for Efficient Operations and Reporting

Aviareto, a joint venture between SITA and the Irish Government, has a contract with the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) to establish and operate the International Registry as required by the Cape Town Treaty. The company draws on the joint strengths of SITA and the Irish aviation sector.

As part of the implementation process for the Cape Town Treaty, the Secretary General of ICAO issued a global tender in January 2004 for an organisation to establish, and act as Registrar for, the International Registry. Aviareto, based in Dublin, was selected for the undertaking. Aviareto is performing these functions on a not-for-profit, cost recovery basis, as required by the Cape Town Convention.

Aviareto is required to operate the International Registry pursuant to the Convention and Protocol in line with the Regulations and Procedures and use the best practices in current use in the field of electronic registry design and operation.

CHALLENGE

Aviareto requested TEKenable to design, build, and implement a suite of 16 dashboards for the company’s internal-facing Dynamics 365 system. The purpose of these dashboards is to simplify the running of day-to-day operations and reporting within the organisation.

SOLUTION

Our proposed solutions followed the low code, no code approach leveraging to the maximum extent the Microsoft stack components to empower Aviareto and capture digital signals the business could use to improve delivery to its customers. 

In addition, our deep development skills in the Microsoft 365 technology stack made TEKenable an ideal partner for Aviareto on its Digital Transformation Journey. 

The key components from the Power Platform we utilised to deliver this solution are Power BI for Business Intelligence Reporting and Office 365.

OUTCOME

A Power BI solution that encompassed a BI Portal and Navigation, Power BI dashboards and a Power BI report integrated into D365. The key components from the Power Platform we utilised to deliver this solution are Power BI for Business Intelligence Reporting and Office 365.

International Crisis Accommodation System in Support of Ukraine

Summary

As a result of the war in Ukraine, a large number of refugees are landing in Ireland. The Irish Red Cross has taken the initiative to ask for Pledges from the Irish Public for assistance in housing these refugees on a voluntary basis. TEKenable received an emergency request for assistance from the Irish Red Cross via Microsoft Ireland to help provide them with systems to manage the crisis pro bono. The purpose of this solution was to aid various data collection processes undertaken by the Irish Red Cross with the help of the Irish Army and Auctioneers Association during this crisis.

We delivered a Power Apps Portal for collection of accommodation assessment data from 3rd parties like Auctioneers Association members from across Ireland. In addition, a Model Driven Power App was created for the Irish Red Cross and partner agencies to process the accommodation approvals and suitability data collected via the Portal. Both apps were delivered within 3 working days from receiving the request to deploying the apps to Production environments.

Scope of Project

The Irish Red Cross has received tens of thousands of pledges for Vacant and Shared Property from the Irish Public to help them house incoming refugees from Ukraine. The Irish Red Cross required a system that allows them to assess the conditions and suitability of each pledged property before they matched refugee families to these properties.

The Irish Army offered to work with the Auctioneers Association across the country to help with the assessment of these pledged properties. The Irish Army call centre organised appointments for the members of the Auctioneers Association to visit each of the properties and complete a property assessment form.

The property assessment forms were required to be available via a responsive (mobile device friendly) web portal or app that would allow submission of the data to the Irish Red Cross. 

The Irish Red Cross needed the ability to process this data in a back-office app with the ability to see all the submitted records and publish the data via excel for sharing with their partner agencies and Irish Government Departments as well as to provide statistical analysis for Government Ministers. They also needed to categorise the data easily so they could easily identify Vacant or Shared Properties suitable for specific family sizes or disabled friendly etc.

TEKenable Contribution

After an initial few meeting’s between the Irish Red Cross, Microsoft and TEKenable senior leadership it was agreed that TEKenable would receive a format for each of the different forms required for Vacant Property Assessment and Shared Property Assessment from the Irish Red Cross.  In practise due to the pressure placed on the Red Cross TEKenable was required to have more autonomy of decision making that would be usual for a non-crisis project.

TEKenable would than undertake the delivery of the online forms via Power Apps Portal and Model Driven App. TEKenable provisioned a new Irish Red Cross Emergency Tenant for hosting the apps.

Power Automate

We provisioned multiple Environments and Portals and configured Azure DevOps Pipelines to manage the ALM. TEKenable stood up a team of Power Platform consultants to help deliver the required solutions.

The Email Campaign was set up using the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing module. It allowed the IRC to have full visibility of the customer journey, from tracking the initial reminder pledge email that was sent, to viewing which people hadn’t opened the email or overlooked clicking on the pledge link and following up with them accordingly.

This information was crucial to the IRC in understanding the number of people who were still interested in pledging a property and allowed them to confirm the statistics with the government.

Outcome

The Irish Red Cross and TEKenable reviewed the solution demo, and we found the customer satisfied with the Power apps implementation despite the challenging timelines and fluid context. TEKenable provided the Power Apps Portal URLs for the Auctioneers Association members to directly access and start submitting their Property Assessments from their mobile devices.

Data is already being received into Dataverse from the portal and the Irish Red Cross have started matching and sharing extracts of the Dataverse data using the Power Apps Excel Export features. 

The users had never used Power Apps previously and were given minimal training and Microsoft Docs article URLs to help them Login, navigate a Model Driven App, use Views and export data to excel so their success is a testimony to the intuitive nature of the platform. 

Technology Used

Power Platform Dataverse – Power App – Model Driven

Independent Trustee Company – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Platform

Independent Trustee Company (ITC) is one of Ireland’s leading providers of self-administered pensions with over €1.2 billion of client funds in 4,000 pension structures.  Established in 1992 and employing almost sixty staff, ITC also acts as a trustee of self-administered schemes, private trusts and larger occupational schemes. Moreover, ITC is among one of the founding members of the Association of Pensioneer Trustees in Ireland.

THE CHALLENGE

ITC realized that its existing legacy system was incompatible with new business needs. A huge number of spread sheet macros had grown up across the organisation, making the work look chaotic, untidy and all over the place. Many of organization’s processes were still quite manual and crying out to be automated. A new platform was needed to make business processes more efficient and effective, without increasing headcount.

A thorough analysis and mapping of business processes, which needed transformation, was done, resulting in a list of more than forty processes, ranging from complex scenarios like adding new customers, which required digital signatures and AML compliance, through to simpler processes like ‘transfer of funds’, where customers wished to allocate money between investments, which needed to be revamped.

THE SOLUTION

ITC turned to us (TEKenable), its long-time technology services provider, with years of experience in providing companies with innovative, modern IT systems to integrate with their existing legacy systems. Having worked with ITC for more than a decade, we were intimately aware of the company’s existing IT infrastructure.

We earlier worked with ITC to eliminate paper-based processes and built iTrust – a platform holding details of all client investment information. This project was a huge success, reducing costs significantly, making business more efficient and positioning ITC to thrive despite the severe recession that hit in 2008.

ITC is a very successful company and has built a very strong position in the market for self-administered pensions. The challenge now is to grow revenues by winning new business and to do this without a big increase in headcount. Deploying Phase 1 of our new platform will allow us to manage new customers acquisition more efficiently and to better serve our customers, once we on-board them. We’re happy we selected Dynamics and we look forward to working closely with TEKenable to deliver Phase 2.

Eamonn King

Head of IT dept. at ITC

After long discussions within the client ITC, it was decided that the solution will be implemented in an array of phases, with Phase 1 of ‘quick wins’ and high impact improvements and a Phase 2 to further extended automation across the business.

Phase 1 is complete and operational where TEKenable provided ITC with a platform – Microsoft Dynamics 365 – which best met their vision for proficient business operations. Dynamics 365 was successfully implemented and integrated well into the existing Office 365 environment. ITC already had access to SharePoint under its E3 license, so it made sense to integrate Dynamics with SharePoint for document storage and management.

THE OUTCOME

The solution has enabled ITC to manage all the activities involved in onboarding a new client – entirely through Dynamics 365. It is also integrated with iTrust, the bespoke ITC system holding customer account and investment information.

Moreover, the solution eliminated a wide range of manual processes and enable ITC to use one centralized system for clientele management. It also enabled ITC to save human capital costs, enhanced their business activity, and lowered the cost of maintaining exhausted and weary old systems in place.

An Post – Publicity Post Website Platform

An Post is the state-owned provider of postal services in the Republic of Ireland, providing a “universal postal service” to all parts of the country as a member of the Universal Postal Union. Its business is split between two main areas (i) Mails & Parcels – which includes their rapidly growing eCommerce and mail marketing businesses, and (ii) Retail – including all expanding financial, and post office services providing a trusted gateway to government services both online and in person. An Post has approx. 7,600 staff and operates through approx. 950 post office locations, making it Ireland’s largest employer.

THE CHALLENGE

The implementation of the new EU GDPR policy, new data privacy, and opt-in rules impacted various digital channels such as Email and SMS marketing. This opened a great opportunity for services like Publicity Post, a leaflet delivery service offered by An Post for businesses to market their products. As mail and leaflet services like Publicity Post are an opt-out channel – i.e., recordable opted-in consent is not required, which is permitted by the principle of legitimate interest.

THE SOLUTION

This positioned Publicity Post extremely well in this new GDPR era as a very impactful and competitive marketing channel. And so, it is in this environment that An Post sought to digitally transform Publicity Post, making it more automated, sales, and customer-centric, whilst also aiming to capitalize on the new GDPR opportunity.

TEKenable, along with our partner Strata3, built a user-friendly e-commerce website for An Post where customers can easily log in and set up their own leaflet campaign. The website also provided a unique option of Print &  Delivery or Delivery Only, where users can select from a variety of leaflet size options, choose their delivery zones, time period for delivery, and immediate pricing based on the number of delivery addresses.

Moreover, it provided users the option to pay for the campaign by simply using their card or account. The front-end design was developed by Strata3, while TEKenable provided all the back-end administrative support systems for the service, to ensure the smooth flow of data and information between users and An Post.

Publicity Post Web Outlook

THE OUTCOME

This new Publicity Post system helped An Post successfully target new SMEs and enterprise customers. Simple and user-friendly design helped in onboarding new customers for An Post.

https://publicitypost.anpost.com

This not only increased revenue, but also ensured service efficiency, saving a lot of time which An Post staff earlier consumed in taking orders on the phone, tracking the delivery of leaflets, and updating customers about the progress of their campaigns.

This project ensured An Post’s success in achieving its two main and overriding business goals i.e. to increase the existing enterprise customer base by enhancing their experience and to target new SMEs with a service offering that meets their business needs.

Cloud-based Electoral Portal for Dublin City Council

Dublin City Council (DCC) is the democratically elected body that governs Dublin City. It is the largest Local Authority in Ireland. DCC has implemented a hybrid Azure cloud-based electoral portal http://www.voter.ie for the citizens residing in the four local authorities; Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, and South Dublin County Council. 

Some of the Voter.ie DCC and TEKenable Team

THE CHALLENGE

There are currently over 899,000 people entitled to vote in the four local authorities. Each year there are on average 25,000 people who reach the eligibility age to vote in the Dublin region. In 2018, it was an exceptionally busy year, and 43,312 electors registered to vote in the Dublin region. In any given year, DCC expects over 64,000 changes to electorate details and wanted an electoral portal that would be the go-to portal for new and existing voters.

THE SOLUTION

Following a comprehensive tender evaluation process, TEKenable was chosen as the technology provider to design, build, test, and support the electoral portal using our Digital Systems Service.

Screen Shot from Voter.ie web site

The project involved a great deal of complexity incorporating the integration with Azure Cloud and on-premise databases, integration with the Department of Social Protection MyGovID system, and integration with the existing electoral user information database. As the electoral portal would not be only processing sensitive personal data but would be doing so in the context of the electoral process, protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data was critical. 

The solution had to guard against attempts to disrupt or alter the outcome of the electoral process which prioritized data protection, data privacy, and data security for Dublin City Council. The solution can seamlessly respond to spikes in demand that may be occasioned by pending filing deadlines or other events. 

THE OUTCOME

For Dublin City Council, the electoral portal will provide the benefit of automating much of the current manual processes in changing the personal and contact details of voters in the various local authorities which will reduce the cost and administrative overhead substantially.

TEKenable delivered a highly secure, scalable, available, and user-friendly electoral portal that will address the voter search, voter registration, and change detail requirements of the existing and future electorate of the greater Dublin region for decades to come with the possibility of extending this coverage nationally in the future.

A comment from the Minister of State for Local Government and Electoral Reform “I see this as an important step towards the Government’s plan to improve and modernize the electoral registration process.” is provided in https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/new-online-voter-registration-available-for-dubliners-1.3871931

DPD Implements ‘Barry’ The Chatbot

DPD, established in 1976 and owned by the French Postal service, delivers more than 5.2 million parcels every day and has built up a strong reputation for service excellence.

THE CHALLENGE

DPD Ireland required a chatbot solution that would allow customers to get access to delivery information and change their delivery details without having to wait for a customer agent to become available. And that would allow for 24/7 support for customers. The Chatbot solution should also provide customers with four self-service options, namely, tracking a parcel, changing delivery details, engaging through live chat, and an AI-driven natural language interface.

THE SOLUTION

To do this, TEKenable built the ChatBot UI and integrated it with the Microsoft Cortana Intelligence platform to provide the AI engine. Then it integrated it with a number of DPD’s ‘Back End’ systems to both query parcel data and transact for the Customer.

THE OUTCOME

The statistics were phenomenal, substantially reducing Call Centre traffic freeing capacity, and at the same time improving Customer Service. DPD has named their ChatBot “Barry” and is now looking at extending its capability and adding new bots to the service.

Get in Touch with TEKenable

Get in Touch with TEKenable