International charity Mercy Ships is devoted to bringing access to affordable, safe and timely surgery to sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1978, Mercy Ships has used hospital ships, like the Africa Mercy, which is currently docked in Guinea. The charity’s mission is to collaboratively work with African nations to address the surgical needs in areas of the world that need it, and to invest in training, development, and advocacy in order to build the medical capacity needed to eradicate the need for an organization like them entirely.
With the Africa Mercy spending 10 months of each year in active field service delivering healthcare in a different port, Mercy Ships is now planning to add another ship to treat even more patients in need. However, this kind of scaling – essentially doubling operations comes with many challenges. The successful planning and addition of another ship to the Mercy Ships fleet will entail careful planning and estimations regarding an entire range of needs: recruiting and staffing, strategy and planning, operations and logistics, funding and accounting. Mercy Ships knows it will need both high quality and increased data sources to make effective decisions.
Mercy Ships has been leveraging Qlik’s software to manage and attain insights into their data. In their dynamic HR reporting, for example, they use Qlik’s ability to drill down into varying demographics to understand their world through dashboards translating into more volunteers and a more highly engaged staff, which ultimately helps us deliver more effective programs, helping more people.
“Qlik’s associative difference means all your data can be brought together in one platform. It allows data to be linked together, as it is in our mind. Unlike linear exploration, with an ‘ask, wait, answer’ cycle, with Qlik, you can explore without boundaries and gain unexpected insight, using the associative engine.”
– Joff Williams, Mercy Ships, Director of Innovation & Enterprise
Speaking as part of the NetHope webinar series, Mercy Ships Director of Innovation and Enterprise Joff Williams discussed Qlik’s Associative Engine and how it helps gather and compile data from siloed sources and brings them together to identify key insights to improve operational performance.
Putting data into dashboards has permitted Mercy Ships to analyze their operations with exacting detail. Mercy Ships already has HR, financial, fundraising, marine data and more in Qlik. They are working toward a data-centric enterprise architecture, where core “pillar” systems are connected by robust data integration and analytics, powered by Qlik.
As momentum to build the second ship moves forward, the organization seeks to standardize systems for core group processes. Having this centralized identity, data integration & BI in a single place through Qlik is critical for Mercy Ships and the organization is on pace to attain this vision in 2019.
Watch the entire webinar here and learn more about how we can leverage data, and thrive.
