Introduction
Auckland Council is New Zealand’s largest municipal organisation, created through the merger of eight local councils into a single regional authority. With disparate systems and data landscapes inherited from each entity, the council needed a unified, reliable analytics foundation. WhereScape was selected to rapidly deliver an enterprise data warehouse capable of supporting city-wide decision making.
Pre-WhereScape Challenges
- Fragmented Systems: Each former council maintained its own tools and processes, making combined reporting slow and unreliable.
- Manual Reporting Bottlenecks: Teams waited months for consolidated data, limiting strategic and operational decision making.
- Visibility Gaps: HR lacked demographic insight, finance struggled to compare budgets, and asset teams couldn’t track assets consistently.
- Inconsistent Data Access: Different departments had different levels of visibility, creating siloed, incomplete views of organisational performance.
Why WhereScape?
Auckland Council required a data warehousing solution that could integrate dozens of legacy systems, scale with organisational complexity, and accelerate time to value. WhereScape RED and 3D offered rapid automation, real-data modelling, agile development cycles, and strict alignment with BI/DW best practices: allowing the council to iterate quickly and deliver analytics in days rather than months.
“WhereScape RED puts the right information at our managers’ fingertips, so they can understand and act on what’s happening in the organisation.”
– Mike Brothers, Enterprise Information Delivery Manager, Auckland Council
The Solution
Enterprise Data Warehouse Build
WhereScape partnered with the council’s Business Intelligence Team to design and automate a full enterprise data warehouse integrating disparate council systems.
Iterative Real-Data Modelling
Using WhereScape 3D and RED, the team modelled solutions with real data and provided prototypes to stakeholders within hours or days, accelerating validation and refinement.
Unified Single Source of Truth
All demographic, asset, HR, financial, and operational data was transformed and consolidated into one trusted repository for the entire organisation.
“Our old tools didn’t give us the speed, action or quality we needed. Analysis and modelling in lots of different areas was difficult, but with Wherescape RED it’s easy to see our information as a cohesive whole.”
– Mike Brothers, Enterprise Information Delivery Manager, Auckland Council
Results
🚀 Faster, Reliable Decision Making
- Data delivery cycles reduced dramatically.
- Consistent, accurate reporting available for daily operations.
- Managers equipped with real-time insight for city-wide planning.
🚀 Department-Ready Dashboards
- Custom dashboards tailored for HR, Finance, Asset Management and more.
- HR gains instant visibility into headcount, payroll and demographics.
- Asset data centralised for improved tracking and planning.
🚀 Improved Financial Transparency
- Finance teams access live, consolidated budget and performance data.
- Cross-department comparisons simplified.
- Enhanced accountability across spending units.
“Now the foundation is taken care of, we can focus on our day to day challenges.”
– Ingrid McClymont, Business Manager, Auckland Council
Modernising Local Government Data
The consolidation of eight separate councils created immediate complexity for Auckland Council, with incompatible systems, structures and reporting approaches. Establishing a centralised data architecture became essential to streamline governance, spending, and service delivery across the region. WhereScape’s automation allowed the council to evolve quickly without the delays of traditional BI development.
Enabling a Data-Driven Culture
With automated workflows and reliable pipelines, council staff gained confidence in their data. Teams once constrained by manual extracts now operate with self-service dashboards, encouraging data-led planning, budget management and service optimisation.
Building for Long-Term Scalability
As Auckland continues to grow, so do its data demands. The automated data warehouse built on WhereScape RED provides the flexibility to adapt to new regulatory requirements, new datasets, and new digital services, all with minimal development overhead.
