At the 2023 ASSIST FM Conference in Glasgow, West Lothian Council was awarded for Innovation in the Scottish National FM Awards in recognition of the Council's efforts to modernise its cashless catering system by upgrading to Fusion, CRB Cunningham's cloud-hosted cashless solution.
Discover how West Lothian Council went from manual data processes to transforming how cashless catering data is processed and delivering a better catering experience to pupils.
Upgrading to Fusion Cashless
With a focus on providing the best possible services for students and staff, West Lothian Council (WLC) upgraded its cashless catering system from Impact to CRB Cunningham's Fusion Cashless solution in all 13 secondary schools.
Fusion is a modern cashless catering system with a host of additional cashless functionalities, including the Fusion Online pre-order app and Facial Recognition for fast meal transactions. The project with West Lothian Council commenced in August 2021 and was completed in January 2022.
The challenge: reducing the risk of system failures
The previous system, Impact, was installed on individual catering managers' PCs with daily manual backups to external devices or data copied to folders on the same hard disk. This increased the risk of data loss if schools experienced downtime during a PC failure.
Impact data was copied to an on-premises server each night to allow management reporting via Crystal Reports. Data from CRB Cunningham's iPayimpact online payment system was also copied from CRBC servers to facilitate management reporting within WLC.
The solutions: Implementing Fusion Cashless & Azure Data Warehouse
Fusion Cashless is a fully cloud-hosted solution. Each piece of equipment, such as tills, PCs, and revaluation units, connects independently, reducing the risk of downtime or service failure.
WLC worked closely with CRB Cunninghams to ensure a successful Fusion implementation in all 13 secondary schools. When it was identified that the centralised reporting environment was unavailable, we were keen to develop a reporting solution for West Lothian Council and other schools in the UK.
In response, we collaborated with FM Services to develop a solution called 'Data Factory'. Our development team created an Azure data warehouse environment for reporting, populated with critical data tables and refreshed daily. We communicated the Azure server connection process, and WLC IT Services applied internal firewall changes within the Council's network to allow named devices access to the server.
FM Services worked closely with the CRBC team to agree on the data available in the Azure environment, including data from our online payment platform iPayimpact, formerly copied to WLC's central reporting server. This allowed WLC to remove its central reporting server, saving on server support and storage space.
Power BI reporting and dashboards
To make the most of the data available in the Azure environment, FM Services used Power BI, part of Microsoft 365, to develop reports and dashboards and distribute them to management users. Power BI brings data from various sources into one place, providing a comprehensive view of meal sales per high school and staff resource hours and allowing for better performance measurement.
The results: improved data management and reporting
The collaboration between West Lothian Council's FM Services and CRB Cunninghams resulted in a solution that has improved data management and reporting capabilities while reducing the risk of system failure and cost savings.
CRB Cunninghams is proud to have been part of West Lothian Council's journey to becoming an award-winning council that offers a modernised cashless system and provides valuable data insights to school staff across multiple sites.
