The spirit of altruism and volunteering is a core tenet of the United Nations, where individuals around the world can contribute to the UN goals of universal betterment in progressive social, environmental and economic transformation. Volunteerism in the UN is championed especially by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, an organization that works with partners to integrate volunteers into development programming and promote the value and global recognition of volunteerism.
We count on UNICC for expertise and experience in delivering application integration services. The data dashboards now in place help to prioritise the business intelligence the business needs for us to change and grow with the times.
Frederic Le Maistre, Chief Information Officer, UNV
Based in Bonn, Germany, UNV is a UNICC Client, supported with a myriad of services ranging from infrastructure hosting to digital transformation, ICT strategy support, Robotic Process Automation and application integration support and development.
UNICC’s services supporting UNV also benefit its 9,400 volunteers, 150 staff across six regional offices and 60 field units. Additionally, UNV is under the administrative domain of UNDP and consists of an Executive Board of UNDP, UNFPA and UNOPS, all also UNICC Clients and Partner Organizations.
UNV partnered with UNICC to implement Application Integration services and Business Intelligence support from UNICC’s Data and Analytics team. Beginning in 2018, the project entailed the planning, gathering and consolidating of essential business data and analytics for UNV’s Finance department. Several of these deliverables consisted of:
- Streamlining usage and flows of various data structures to prioritise strategic targets
- Supporting and fine-tuning existing SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages to optimise performance
- Developing a BI data model and reports using various data sources including SSAS tabular and Power BI, which also needed to be embedded in existing UNV applications
- Design and build customised dashboard and reports for external audiences
- Build integrated reports for existing UNV applications (using Power BI embedded)
- Validate and ensure configurations and parameters of various data sources for various UNV applications
- Performance improvements for reports.
Technologies include SQL Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server, Power BI Premium and Pro with a Microsoft Azure Infrastructure.
Due to the smooth delivery of the BI project support service in 2018, UNICC signed on to continue to support UNV in October of 2020 to provide business analyses and gather critical data on major reports, including financial, contribution, status and donor reports, among many others.
For each report which the UNICC team members consolidated and published for UNV, they offered and ensured valuable insights and data on the required maintenance and improvements, with one year resiliency on the information included. The trusted partnership of UNV and UNICC not only strengthens the functions of an organization catered towards service but also exemplifies the result of meaningful coordination.
Across the successful deliverables and impactful team collaboration, UNICC’s BI support for UNV demonstrate the importance of the health of internal organizational structures. The robust data analytics and newly advanced internal reports amplify UNV’s capabilities to manage its missions in providing volunteers to hundreds if not thousands of UN initiatives around the globe.
Moreover, UNICC’s partnership with UNV paves a way for UNICC to contribute to the spirit of volunteerism for the UN mission and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, notably Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and Goal 17: Partnership for the Goals.
