suneetha vaitheswaran director, business information services university of chicago
TRANSCRIPT
BI APPROACH - JUST DO IT!
DW WORKSHOP AT CSGMAY 14, 2013
Suneetha Vaitheswaran
Director, Business Information Services
University of Chicago
U OF C FACTS
• Founded 1892 by John D. Rockefeller• 12,000 students, 56% grad students• 11 Schools & Divisions• 2,200 faculty• 150,000 alumni• $466M sponsored research• $6.6B endowment
BI: THE RIGHT APPROACH1. Sell the initiative and get funding2. Procure tools, platform, and
architecture3. Design the bus matrix 4. Build and integrate each subject area5. Create additional targeted data marts6. Celebrate your EDW!7. Add dashboards8. Move into predictive analytics9. Refresh your architecture10. Work on Big Data11. …
THE STATE OF THE U Institution
Hit hard by the economic downturn Continued aggressive growth 87 Nobel Prize winners, extremely faculty-driven Pushback on admin staff and processes Executives demanding data for decision-making
Systems Hundreds of legacy and silo’d source systems Inconsistent, bottoms-up business processes Erratic data stewardship Nonstop demand for feeds
THE STATE OF BI Dispersed team One size for all users = ad-hoc Architecture and maintenance projects No new subject areas in years Many separate Business Objects
systems Limited partnerships Consultants defining strategy for
reporting BIS formalized late in 2007
START DOING Team building
Hired slowly, but got great folks Realigned team Leveraged ownership of stack: architecture through
support “Coordinate reporting approaches into an enterprise-
wide, streamlined solution” Took over admin of all BO systems Began managing consultants
“Provide easy-to-use and flexible access to data” Began revamp of training – short modules vs. day-long
“Use consistent best practice methods & tools” Redo of DW/ETL architecture a big success
“Partner for progress and data governance” Started Stewardship Council Registrar: Student data warehouse New Research system: Grants data warehouse
EMERGING VISION Login to one place for reporting Similar look/feel across subject areas Support different user skill levels Training a means to an end High performance and availability Consider integration points
KEEP DOING Committed to multiple projects at a time Implemented best practice consolidated
architecture for Business Objects Teams coalesced Focused on standards and process
including coordinating SDLC with PMO Brought SMEs in earlier Acknowledged surprises and new
priorities
Service Data Source Key Functionality UsersCustom security
User training
KB
IRF FinancialFAS - transaction and
subaccount detail
Provides Central office administrators, Dean’s offices, and academic department administrators with standard reporting packages and ability generate custom reports to manage financial operations and administer grants. Also used for ARRA and F&A compliance reporting 800 X X X
IRF Matrix, OBS FAS
Specialized applications that map and categorize financial transactions to drive annual financial statement reporting (Matrix) and budget category reporting (OBS). Now also used by divisions and academic units, and feeds Delphi 200 X X X
IRF PayrollPayroll and EDB-detailed payroll transactions
Provides Central office administrators, Dean’s offices, and academic department administrators with standard biweekly and monthly reporting packages, and ability to generate custom reports to reconcile payroll operations, including managing restricted funds 450 X X X
IRF HR EDB and PAFProvides Dean’s offices, and academic department HR and Grant administrators with standard reporting packages and ability generate custom reports to develop account projections, integrating pay history forecasting of pay to accounts
120 X X X
Delphi Budget Planning
IRF-Financial, OBS, HR
Provides the central Budget Office and ‘Exec Levels’ with Budget and Salary planning applications for provide comprehensive planning, entry, forecasting, and reporting 60 X X X
AURA Grants DWAURA (Click) Full
Grants
Provides Central office administrators (URA), Dean’s offices, and academic department administrators with standard reporting packages and ability generate custom reports to track and manage proposals and awards
380 X X X
AURA IRB DW AURA (Click) IRBProvides Central office administrators (IRB directors and staff), department chairs and administrators with standard reporting packages and ability generate custom reports to track and manage sponsored research protocols
150 X X X
SDW Graduate Teaching
GargoyleProvides Provost office, Deans of Students, and department administrators with standard reporting packages and ability generate custom reports to track and manage doctoral student teaching for GAI and non-GAI students
100 X X
SDW Enrollment, Person
Gargoyle, IRF HRProvides Central office administrators (President, Provost, CSL), Deans of Students, and department administrators with standard reporting packages and ability generate custom reports to track and analyze student enrollments and demographics
120 X X X
BO Pilot /Student Gargoyle, IRF HRProvides Central office administrators (President, Provost, CSL), and Deans of Students with access to student enrollment, financial aid , and billing data for reporting and analysis 70 X
BO Pilot /Applicant OGSAProvides graduate admissions offices with OGSA applicant information for reporting
40 X
Services
9
BI NOW High demand from senior stakeholders New app projects include BI Capital projects requested by steward PMO partners with BIS regularly Good relationships with functional areas User base increasing 10-15% year Better understanding of what it takes
BI STRATEGY BI Strategy must address:
Current State: Turn challenges into opportunities The Culture: Will introduce constraints Defined Benefits: Introduce some structure
BI Strategy must be: Feasible: Balance user with architecture projects User-focused: Not all users happy Sustainable: Build solid stuff, resource load projects
BI Strategy must overcome: Perception: Deliver good stuff Partnership challenges: Strong team, better selling Reality: Deliverables create more demand
THE BOTTOM LINE Marketing opportunities come in ways
you may only recognize when they come up, so be ready
Planning happens all the time – always connect the dots and keep user focus paramount. The vision will come more easily.
Doing it means mapping planned and unplanned efforts into a whole program, and continually realigning the pieces to make sense to you, team, stakeholders
BUT IT’S NOT PERFECT… Over-committed Very little redundancy across team Tools: Monitoring, ETL, Metadata Tipped too far to user deliverables Not yet EDW (integration) No time to redo original (financial &
payroll) Get to visualization, analytics, big data Strategy when ERP shows up? The Hospital Little abatement of local systems
DISCUSSION & THANK YOU!
APPENDIX
THE REALITY… We can’t wait so just give me a feed… Wow, the source data is terrible! This new system needs reporting, do that
next. Oh, there is no consistent business process… This financial DW is for operational reporting. We have how many separate BO systems?? Provost needs that reporting app ASAP… Our architecture has been off vendor support
for how many years? You have BO, you don’t need a bigger team..
BOIL IT DOWN BI Strategy must address:
Current State The Culture Defined Benefits
BI Strategy must be: Feasible User-focused Sustainable
BI Strategy must overcome: Perception Partnership challenges Reality
HURDLES BO environments a mess Diversion from student DW to grad
reporting Sluggish Stewardship efforts Adapting DW/BI to PMO SDLC Team challenges Always asking for a seat at the table No time to build conformed dimensions
SUSTAINABLE Deliverables are solid Structure and accountability in projects CITO implements governance and
planning ITIL improved IT partner understanding Pounded team on communication & user
focus Bosses very supportive No ERP elevates criticality of DW/BI
NEW CURRENT STATE DW/BI apps: Financial, Payroll, HR, Grants,
IRB, Enrollment/Person, Graduate Teaching EPM: Budget Planning and Management Single consolidated BO environment 1700 users In progress: Expense, COI, Registration Self-service access (viewer, analyst, power
user) Standard reporting packages plus ad-hoc Platforms: Power Designer, Oracle db, OWB,
VPD, AD, ESP, Business Objects, Hyperion
SUCCESS FACTORS Broad span of control Structured projects Resource loading Amazing team
DOCUMENT BENEFITS Self-service access to core administrative reporting that decreases report
requests to IT and central business offices Single point of user entry to reporting applications over and across multiple
data areas, using common ‘business intelligence’ tools and access methods Consistent look and feel of reporting applications across different data areas Reporting design and deliverables that serve user types from casual to
advanced Common training and support model tiered to effectively deliver training and
help to various users types, and coordinated with other systems and stewards ‘Smart’ models that organize data for reporting, resolve some source
inconsistencies, and add context/help to simplify analysis and creation of new reports
Support of historical analysis and trending to enable projections and data-driven decisions, even after source system history is purged
Integrated reporting to support analysis across and within each business process lifecycle to answer critical questions regarding instruction and research
Enhanced value of source applications by deploying reporting tool functionality to support effective data analysis and decision support (e.g. drilldown, linking ‘like’ reports, slice/dice, dynamic filtering)
Fast data retrieval that does not impact performance of transaction systems Best practice architecture for data warehouse and user interface that is
flexible, extensible, and high-performing