Indexation Tool
Summary
Deecon built a custom tool in Excel, forecasting indexation spend to improve data visibility and reporting on 50+ supplier contracts. We designed dashboards to provide data analytics on inflation and price indices, helping CityFibre to more effectively manage inflation cost.
Situation & Approach
We followed an agile development model to prioritise the client’s requirements, ensuring we built a functionally useful tool that delivered meaningful insights:
1. Requirements Analysis
Deecon held collaborative workshops with prospective end users in CityFibre teams to define the specific functionality they required for effective commercial management.
2. Development
We combined all product requirements and end user feedback to design a tool that prioritised usability. It was especially important that the tool was easy to maintain once we handed it over to the client, ensuring the base data that fed all dashboards was simple to update.
3. Testing
We held weekly testing sessions internally and reported all progress in weekly meetings with the client, constantly seeking feedback to inform iteration. Through diligent quality assurance, the team ensured full functionality by performing trial runs to address errors and identify UX improvements.
4. Iteration
After handing over the initial release version of the tool along with full user guidance documentation, Deecon provided ongoing support and training to CityFibre. Ultimately delivering two subsequent iterations to refresh the tool with upgrades and additional features in response to user feedback.
Results
Improved financial planning – the dashboards provided in the tool showed inflation trends are helped CityFibre to forecast indexation spend
Enhanced risk identification – seeing inflation cost in a centralised location dramatically improved the data visibility for the client to help inform risk mitigation strategies
Comprehensive corporate reporting – we implemented standard dashboards that could be fed directly into powerpoint templates to provide a clear picture of indexation cost for executive reporting