Case Study: University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland achieves unified, self-service management reporting and faster decision-making with BOARD

Board offers completely new opportunities for reporting

The North West Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (FHNW) is a leading, practice-oriented Swiss university with nine colleges, about CHF 445 million in annual turnover and roughly 2,700 staff. FHNW relied on three separate systems (SAP, a bespoke workload tool and Evento), which made combining financial and non-financial KPIs difficult, slowed reporting for some 2,400 projects and required extensive manual effort—reports were being emailed to around 500 project managers. The Control team wanted a single, central MIS to improve transparency, enable dynamic trend analysis and free up time for consulting rather than data management.

FHNW implemented BOARD in collaboration with experts, delivering a two-layer solution (SQL-based data warehouse with ETL and master data management, and BOARD business apps on top) within five months. About 50 senior managers and 400 project managers now use the web platform, which is administered by the control team without programming help. The result is a stable, user-friendly single platform that supports fast ad-hoc and complex reports, drill-downs, document links, geomapping and process controls—reducing manual reporting, improving decision support and enabling ongoing extension to HR, property and other areas.

University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland

Flavio Gläser

Team Leader Control