Case – The Confederation of Danish Employers

Production of statistics is a very important part of the work at the Confederation of Danish Employees (DA). In cooperation with Statistics Denmark DA does, amongst other things, advanced wage statistics which are used as a base for agreement negotiations and regulation of welfare payments in Denmark. The formulas behind the statistics are partly written out in Word and partly coded into DA’s SQL environment. As an addition to their existing quality control of the statistics production, DA wanted to create an extra control tool in Excel, so it would be simpler to calculate and check if the developers had interpreted the printing of the formulas correctly.

The consultant was at DA daily, and solved three main tasks by using Visual Basics in Excel and SAS Enterprise:

• The consultant compared calculations from SQL code with DA’s mathematical formulas and converted it into an Excel spreadsheet which could test the numbers relation to each other. DA already had a spreadsheet for the yearly statistic, but they also wanted one for the economic trend statistic.
• Afterwards, the consultant made an Excel spreadsheet with data validation which companies had to download, fill out and send back. The consultant made macros in the spreadsheet which were there to check if the user’s input was correct.
• Furthermore, the consultant made the Excel spreadsheets in SAS Enterprise which could calculate key numbers and therefore could find possible discrepancies. This was done for both yearly and economic trend statistics.

”The consultant ran it all through and found multiple mistakes that were important to correct. He solved the tasks surprisingly fast and proved to be so sharp that he also made the formula collection for us using SAS. The consultant was also good at seeking clarification, when he ran into issues that stopped his work. He didn’t like wasting time.”

“The consultant was very well functioning and a nice addition to our day-to-day. He liked being social with us, and clearly prioritized coming along to lunch and meeting early for common morning coffee on Friday mornings. We are looking forward to the next project, where the consultant continues his work with SAS.”

Lars Knudsen, Statistics Chief, DA.