RSVZ-INASTI improves performance management

Improved information sharing, optimal use of available data and financial resources, and increased productivity. These were the targets set by the Belgian National Institute for the Social Security of the Self-Employed (RSVZ-INASTI). Implementing a SAS Business Analytics environment has been instrumental in helping RSVZ-INASTI achieve these objectives. The use of the SAS-based dynamic dashboards and balanced scorecards has improved the monitoring of internal processes. The result is more timely and efficient decisions and improvement in the overall performance of the organization.

More efficient decision-making and steering with SAS

The National Institute for the Social Security of the Self-Employed (RSVZ-INASTI) supervises the social security of 952.000 self-employed individuals. Its missions include the awarding of pensions, the payment of child benefits, the collection of social security contributions, and the determination of social security obligations. Its tasks also include the centralized management of data related to self-employed people and to private companies. RSVZ-INASTI has twelve branch offices throughout Belgium and relies on the expertise of 770 employees to carry out its missions and achieve its targets.

Answering performance management questions

As a public social security organization, RSVZ-INASTI deals continuously with a huge amount of incoming and outgoing data. It is constantly asking questions regarding how it can improve its processes, how it can make better use of existing data, and how the different departments perform at the RSVZ-INASTI level and at the regional branch level. In short, RSVZ-INASTI needed a comprehensive insight into its overall performance. The organization wanted to answer these questions using information sharing and reporting tools.
"We have been using SAS since 2002 to improve internal monitoring by generating timely answers to these essential questions," says Patrick Mylle, Senior Strategy Advisor at RSVZ-INASTI.

"Thanks to the automated dashboard application, we can keep track of important or interesting results and problems and perform trend analyses. The application generates operational reports enabling everyone within the organization to follow up on the daily status of files. It also delivers management reports that give the heads of departments a global overview of how their department and the organization as a whole are performing. In other words, it provides essential information for optimal internal steering."

Better data use and reporting

The needs—and questions RSVZ-INASTI needs answers to—have changed in recent years. "We wanted to make even more use of the available data," states Mylle. "For this reason, a new system was developed based on SAS to answer our changing needs. From 2006 to 2009, we implemented an Internet-based SAS reporting tool that answered more detailed, more complex ad-hoc questions.

Increasing overall performance and goal-oriented management steering

It also enabled us to employ formerly unused sources of information in the data warehouse and gain access to the data anywhere, anytime. Moreover, the tool enables us to relate actual performances to preliminary targets. We also now use SAS to obtain monthly results on throughput times and volumes, to get automated and well-illustrated internal benchmarking, and to smooth the steering possibilities."

Dynamic makeover increases steering possibilities

In the next stage, RSVZ-INASTI decided to give a dynamic makeover to its rather static queries and reports. Hence, the SAS-based system was improved by making stored processes available as ready-to-use queries. This makes it both easier and faster to obtain information from queries. Easy-to-use parameters were also inserted to enable key-users as well as occasional users to create tailor-made reports. The first releases of the RSVZ-INASTI balanced scorecards were sometimes overloaded with information. So the number of views was decreased to ensure more efficient steering. "The number of KPIs was also rationalized to allow goal-oriented steering. Moreover, we listened to the needs of our end-users to improve the tool's user-friendliness," recalls Mylle.

SAS tool grows with our expanding needs

"Our experience with SAS has shown that their solutions are able to grow with our developing needs and expectations," declares Mylle. "We will begin to expand the use of dynamic dashboards and balanced scorecards to all operational departments in 2012."

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