West Lothian Council faced significant challenges in managing and combining data from multiple products across its 13 secondary schools, from frequent downtimes to inefficient data management and reporting limitations. In collaboration with CRB Cunninghams, West Lothian Council modernised its data management and reporting to tackle these issues by developing a new system called Data Factory, hosted on Azure. This cloud-based solution modernises the council’s data management with real-time reporting through Power BI dashboards, offering valuable catering insights across its 13 secondary schools.
The challenge: reducing the risk of system failures
West Lothian Council's systems were previously installed on individual PCs, causing frequent downtime and interrupting the meal service. Relying on manual back-ups and nightly data transfers for reporting through Crystal reports increased the risk of data loss. It made data handling inefficient, limiting the council's ability to make swift, informed decisions across its schools.
The solution: integrating Fusion Cashless
In response, West Lothian Council partnered with CRB Cunninghams to implement Fusion Cashless across its secondary schools. Coupled with a centralised Azure Data Warehouse with Power BI to manage large volumes and data and provide detailed reports and interactive dashboards, the integration enhanced data management capabilities, storage, retrieval, and analysis across the 13 schools.
The outcome: an award-winning data-driven system
West Lothian Council's upgrade to Fusion Cashless significantly improved the efficiency of its lunchtime services, eliminating system downtimes. Integrating Fusion with Azure Data Warehouse and Power BI allowed the council to streamline data processes, gather valuable insights, generate detailed reports and improve its decision-making process across schools.
Schools are now experiencing significantly minimised downtime and uninterrupted services, making the lunchtime service smoother for pupils and staff.
West Lothian Council's transformation did not go unrecognised. The council was awarded the Innovation Award at the 2023 Scottish National FM Awards for modernising its cashless catering system and improving its reporting and data management processes. Their shift from inefficient data management with slower systems to a cloud-hosted system has set a standard for others in the educational sector, proving that embracing technological integration can significantly improve meal service efficiency and decision-making.
