The importance of data is widely recognized and highly praised. Only 0.5% of data is currently analyzed and this percentage shrinks daily as more data is collected. Therefore due to the vast amount of data available, we as a specialist in data analytics, believe that the only way for municipalities to grow effectively is to accurately collect, store and use the data available to them.
Data plays a vital role in both the urban and rural municipalities in South Africa. Having spent years working in both the urban metros and rural municipalities, we are able to determine the relevance and role of items in understanding the full composition of a municipality’s financial position. Once we have analysed all these variables, municipalities are empowered to accurately bill for their services rendered and effectively determine indigent households.
The current breakdown of financial income in municipalities are as follows;
Urban Municipalities
- 60% of their revenues from services rendered
- 26% from property rates
- 14% from Intergovernmental grants and other incomes
Rural Municipalities
- 24% of their revenue from services rendered
- 18% from property rates
- 58% from Intergovernmental grants and other incomes
Our services to the public sector focuses on a municipality’s capability to enhance their revenue. Assessing their data sources and their process of analyzing form part of our immediate service. It is for this reason that we make use of the world-leading BI (Business Intelligence) and Analytics tool – Sisense. Sisense enables us to capture an incredible amount of complex data and simplify it – making data easy to understand.
The public sector faces many challenges when it comes to the quality of data available for analysis which in turn causes difficulty in their ability for accurate billing. Part of our process to improve billing is to conduct a redemptive process called, data cleansing. This process ensures that information used in the billing system is accurate.
Accuracy is vital for us, especially working in the public sector. Using data effectively can increase the amount of accurate customer information, improve the overall billing strategy, debt management and revenue management of municipalities.
From the desk of Lindy Mbatha
