Suneetha Vaitheswaran Director, Business Information Services University of Chicago

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