Success Story Kantonsspital Aarau Kantonsspital Aarau uses Qlik Sense to increase transparency and efficiency in daily clinical operations – through intuitive dashboards and data-driven decisions.
Partner Success Story Plozner Engineering With the iVIEW Library, Plozner Engineering expands its service portfolio, meets customer requirements more efficiently, and builds trust through transparent KPI management.
Success Story Kantonsspital Aarau Kantonsspital Aarau uses Qlik Sense to increase transparency and efficiency in daily clinical operations – through intuitive dashboards and data-driven decisions.
Partner Success Story Plozner Engineering With the iVIEW Library, Plozner Engineering expands its service portfolio, meets customer requirements more efficiently, and builds trust through transparent KPI management.
Success Story - Kantonsspital Aarau AG Qlik at Kantonsspital Aarau: A Compass for Financial Management«With Qlik, individual stakeholders can easily gain insights into topics relevant to them — such as finance, patients, and services. And we can be confident that everyone is working with the same consistent data.»Michael Wyss, Head of BI and Management Accounting, Kantonsspital Aarau AG The CustomerKantonsspital Aarau (KSA) treats over 32,600 inpatients annually and records around 680,000 outpatient treatments and consultations. Its range of medical services spans from basic care to specialized and highly specialized medicine. With approximately 4,700 employees, KSA is one of the most important employers in the canton. Solution at a glance Industry: Healthcare Departments: Executive Management, Finance. Procurement. Human Resources (HR), IT, Performance Management, Radiology, Oncology, Social Services, Medical Staff Region: Aarau, Switzerland Data sources: Data Warehouse - SAP ERP System, Hospital Information System (HIS), Operating Room Management System (OR Management System), Laboratory Information System (LIS), Radiology Software, Service Recording System Technologies in Use: Qlik Sense ROI & Time-to-value: Data-driven management, centralized data provisioning, and process optimization Ausgangssituation Data-Driven Decisions for Corporate ManagementTo steer the hospital proactively, a reliable navigation system is essential. “We want to navigate with foresight, as our size makes us more comparable to a supertanker than to a speedboat,” says Michael Wyss, Head of BI and Management Accounting. “The foundation consists of a vast amount of data from proprietary systems within an IT infrastructure that has evolved over decades. We need to make this data usable for us while ensuring high quality and consistency.”Qlik technology has been in use at KSA for several years. The journey began with QlikView, and has since transitioned to Qlik Sense. Data is provided in the form of data marts via a data warehouse (DWH). Various source systems are connected to the DWH, including SAP as the central ERP, a hospital information system, an operating room management system, a laboratory information system, radiology software, and a service recording system. Data is updated daily to every five days, depending on the data domain, or on demand. Solution On-Site Support from InformatecThe BI environment and needs-based application development are managed by Michael Wyss and his team. “We develop our applications in close collaboration with colleagues from the operational departments as part of an agile reverse engineering process. This ensures that the applications are precisely tailored to their specific needs. The number of requests we receive from various departments shows how well the opportunity to gain insights into decision-relevant data using Qlik Analytics is being received.”Due to the increasing demand for applications, the hospital brought in the Informatec team, which had already proven itself years ago as a skilled BI expert and equal partner during a Qlik landscape optimization workshop. “We regularly have a consultant from Informatec on site. They extend our internal capacities and enable the necessary knowledge transfer in certain more complex data areas or in the development of applications. This allows us to continuously enhance our Qlik expertise. The collaboration is going very well — it’s straightforward, pleasant, and marked by common sense.”Informatec, for example, supported the procurement department in developing a purchasing application. Qlik-Powered Procurement Cockpit The Procurement Department at KSA, led by Thomas Binz, consists of 15 employees and handles approximately 35,000 orders per year with 130,000 individual items — amounting to a procurement volume of 40 to 55 million Swiss francs. Around 15,000 different products are sourced from approximately 800 suppliers — ranging from spaghetti and copier paper to pacifiers, plaster bandages, and cutting-edge computer optics — all with an impressive on-time delivery rate of 98 percent.Procurement is complex not only because of the variety of goods but also due to the wide range of stakeholders and their diverse requirements. These include medical and nursing staff, purchasing and budget managers, administrative and executive personnel, and specialized units such as the hospital kitchen.To meet these demands, the team uses a department-specific Qlik dashboard. “We use Qlik for a comprehensive DRG material analysis,” explains Thomas Binz. “We also track KPIs such as delivery punctuality and completeness, average procurement time, cost per order, and the return rate.” APPLICATION AREAS AND USAGE Hospital-Wide Decision-Making FoundationsQlik is also extensively used in the area of finance. A key focus lies in the implementation of center-based accounting, which enables individual organizational units—such as departments or clinics—to be managed and presented as independent profit centers. Costs and revenues can be assigned based on origin, allowing for a detailed analysis of the efficiency and performance of each unit.The executive management, chief physicians, and senior medical staff use a dashboard to access key figures such as revenues, tax points, average length of stay, full-time equivalents (FTEs), case mix indices, and case mix points. Each clinic also has access to equivalent dashboards tailored to their specific KPIs.A case volume application is also available for executive management and physicians. It provides up-to-date daily data on admissions and discharges, length of stay, tax points, and patient flows.In addition, dedicated streams are available for radiology, oncology, and social services to analyze patient and service data specific to these areas. Data related to affiliated physicians—such as fee payments—is also evaluated.Qlik is also used in human resources, where it visualizes staffing plans and KPIs such as full-time equivalents, absences, and turnover rates—down to the level of individual employees. 0 1 2 Transparency and Efficient ManagementThe hospital gains transparency with Qlik across all relevant areas, enabling effective business decision-making. “We can get a daily overview at a glance of how our business is performing and, if necessary, take immediate action before we get too close to one of those proverbial icebergs,” confirms Christian Rittmann, Chief Financial Officer at KSA.“We get the greatest added value for quickly understanding our financial performance from using Qlik for center-based accounting,” adds Michael Wyss. “We are able to eliminate internal revenues. This is extremely important for us when it comes to financial steering of individual units. Gaining insights into this dynamic and performance would be nearly impossible without Qlik — or would require an enormous amount of manual effort.”Thomas Binz sees the unified data foundation and the reduced effort for data retrieval as key advantages. “If you were to create a supplier analysis from SAP, everyone would get different results, because everyone extracts different SAP tables. With Qlik, the time investment is significantly lower. You can access current data with just a few clicks.”The use of Qlik Analytics also enables the identification of optimization potential, for example in medical processes. Data quality and consistency have also improved, as inconsistencies become visible and can be corrected. Future The hospital won’t be running out of areas where Qlik can serve as a navigator anytime soon: upcoming projects include applications for OR controlling, laboratory analytics, and a budgeting template. Qlik Sense Freedom for Your IntuitionQlik Sense is a revolutionary application that allows anyone to create self-service data visualizations, personalized reports, and dynamic dashboards.Qlik Sense Customer Spotlight « Qlik is our central tool for providing, interpreting, and visualizing data at the cantonal hospital. It serves as a key foundation for the financial management of the organization and its individual departments, as well as for conducting analyses. » Christian Rittmann Chief Financial Officer, Kantonsspital Aarau AG « With Qlik, individual stakeholders can easily gain insights into topics relevant to them — including finance, patients, and services. And we can be confident that everyone is working with the same consistent data. » Michael Wyss Head of BI and Management Accounting, Kantonsspital Aarau AG « We use Qlik for comprehensive DRG material analysis. Additionally, key figures such as delivery punctuality and completeness, average procurement time, cost per order, and return rate are available. » Thomas Binz Head of Procurement, Kantonsspital Aarau AG 0 1 2 Summary ChallengeUtilizing and integrating data from an IT infrastructure that has evolved over decades, and standardizing the data foundation as a basis for decision-making. SolutionImplementation of Qlik Sense and delivery of data-driven applications for nearly every department. BenefitsData-driven corporate managementIncreased efficiency through centralized data provisioningIdentification of optimization potential in internal medical processes and data quality