Stellar Consulting Group has been honoured for its work with the non-profit organisation Stand Children’s Services.
Stellar won the Technology for Good category at last evening’s Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards at the Langham Hotel in Auckland.
Stand works with some of the most disadvantaged families in New Zealand, supplying services in homes and in the community, as well as providing respite care in Children’s Villages.
Last year, Stand was selected to be part of Microsoft’s Cloud for Global Good initiative, and Stellar Consulting was chosen to help Stand to manage and gain vital insights from its client data.
“Non-profit organisations like Stand hold rich, untapped datasets that are vital for measuring and improving community outcomes,” says Stellar Consulting Partner Travis Barker. “Unfortunately, a scarcity of resources in this sector makes it hard to derive value from data.”
Using Microsoft’s Azure public cloud services, Stellar provided a highly scalable and robust data and analytics solution for Stand. Azure Data Factory, SQL Database and Power BI services are used to ingest, store and expose Stand’s case file data in a secure and surprisingly cost-effective manner (less than $0.20 per user per month).
Better outcomes for children at risk
Richard Parry, CIO at Stand, is impressed by the new data and analytics solution.
“Now, it’s very quick for us to spot the outliers and high-risk cases, and we can also tell where we have bottlenecks in our organisation that are impacting our front-line services. We see clients faster, deal with them much more efficiently, and their outcomes will be better because we can spot potential problems before they happen.”
A new motto of “Insight to Action” has been adopted within Stand to describe the transformation the leadership team is hoping to drive throughout their organisation.
Looking ahead, Stellar is keen to help other social service providers gain deeper insights using the systems we’ve helped develop at Stand.
The solution that Stellar has developed with Stand came together in only six weeks and can be repurposed in and out of New Zealand across government, non-government and private sector organisations that deliver a wide array of social services.
– Michael Brick, Legal & Corporate Affairs Director, Microsoft New Zealand
» Learn more about Stellar’s work with Stand Children’s Services
About the Microsoft Partner Awards
The Microsoft Partner Awards are a celebration of New Zealand’s IT sector integrating Microsoft solutions. These awards have been designed to celebrate success related to partner competencies, cloud technology, entrepreneurial spirit, and industry excellence.
This is the 10th year of the awards. Stellar, a Microsoft Gold Data Analytics Partner and a Silver Data Platform Partner, was named Partner of the Year for Data Analytics in 2015.
L-R: Nicholas Glanfield (Stellar), Tauha Te Kani (Stand), Travis Barker (Stellar), Veronica Bennett (Stand), John McDermott (Stellar), Rob Gordon (Stellar). Photo: Microsoft NZ
L-R: Travis Barker (Stellar), Veronica Bennett (Stand), Tauha Te Kani (Stand)
And the winner is… Stellar Consulting!
Rob Gordon (Stellar). Photo: Microsoft NZ
Tauha Te Kani and Veronica Bennett (Stand)
L-R: Philip Goldie (Microsoft), Travis Barker (Stellar), Tauha Te Kani (Stand), Rob Gordon (Stellar), Nicholas Glanfield (Stellar), John McDermott (Stellar), Veronica Bennett (Stand), Grant Broadbent (Stellar), Chris du Toit (Stellar, Barrie Sheers (Microsoft). Photo: Microsoft NZ
