Cloud2’s Rapid BI solution has been turning heads at NHS trusts across the country.

Most NHS trusts are actively interested in developing their performance reporting and tend to focus on so-called ‘Big BI’. Relying on developments based on PerformancePoint, Cognos, and Business Objects etc. However these are long-term, complex projects.

‘Big BI’ tends towards a single, all-encompassing solution for BI processes and data. Although these solutions and technologies have a great deal to offer, they are time-consuming and resource and finance intensive.

Rapid BI is a complementary approach from Cloud2 that often precedes a Big BI project. Rapid BI utilises assets and skills already present within trusts in order to provide rich dashboards, interactive reports and support insights and collaboration around the performance data. This is delivered via a browser, so end users don’t need additional tools on their desktop. It makes extensive use of existing data sources and Excel-based reports and analysis tools.

Performance Dashboards and reports can be delivered within two weeks of project start. These provide powerful ‘at a glance’ insights, collaboration within the dashboard and an in-tune report management process.

Cloud2 have demonstrated Rapid BI to several NHS Trusts and the response has been uniformly excellent.

“We felt that the demo was exactly what we needed to get up and running quickly. The real winner was Rapid BI; at present we are going through a discussion to have one single data warehouse. Rapid BI will allow all the clever BI people to do big boys’ BI and give the power of producing quick reports solutions to the clever Excel people.”

Allan Ruan, Web, Intranet and Extranet Development Manager, Wandsworth PCT

“Rapid BI addresses a real need in the market – there is no doubting the power of ‘big BI’ tools like PerformancePoint and Cognos, however those tools are challenging to develop, require a substantial upfront investment and often are more complicated than end users need. Rapid BI provides performance reporting and visualisation that is very quick, easily developed and managed and immediately usable by analysts and staff. The tools, datasets and quality processes that emerge from a Rapid BI implementation form part of the roadmap that enable better ‘big BI’ projects”

Simon Hudson, Director, Cloud2 Ltd