Get
your BI up and running in 30 days
It is possible
to deploy business intelligence (BI) in 30 days…provided
you have the right people on hand, understand exactly
what's required, and focus only on what's essential
to solving the business problem.
The
project manager of Cognos BI deployment at Major Midwestern
Energy Company, did exactly that—with stellar results.
He outlined the steps he and his team took to get there
and the insights they gained to attendees at Cognos
North American Tech Forum, June 10, 2003 in Orlando.
As
project manager, he was tasked with delivering BI to
improve the Energy Company’s financial/management analysis
and reporting in a couple of the largest business units.
The Company , a $2.6-billion company with more than
8,000 employees was formed after the merger of three
smaller utility companies. When mergers happen, the
data landscape becomes very complex. "After the
merger, they had two or three of everything," He
said.
Although
there were plans to soon begin implementing an ERP system,
the Project Manger knew that the ERP system by itself
was more of a transaction processing system than a business
intelligence system. He also knew that an ERP implementation
could take considerable time and resources. Knowing
that, once the year-long ERP implementation commenced,
there would be few resources left for BI, they had an
extremely small window of opportunity to design, deploy,
and roll out their entire BI solution.
The
team
The first step was to join with the consulting partner
to create a small but talented team of tech-savvy business
analysts, and IT staff. With the tight timeline, having
the right people from day one and creating a common
vision was essential. “Without the right mix of business
and technical skills on a BI project, you're definitely
in a quandary. Just having warm bodies doesn't help.
You need skilled business and IT people with a common
vision."
The
information
Emphasis on business objectives was critical as it formed
the framework for cube design (the data structures for
multidimensional reporting and analysis). The team focused
only on those measures and dimensions that were key
to achieving the business objectives. No time was wasted
with users wrangling over report formats or designs.
"The beauty of Web-based OLAP (online analytical
processing) is that the cube becomes the report. Users
exploited the power of the cube to meet their own information
needs," said Martin Lee, BI Consultant with Smart
Beans.
The
payoff
The Energy Company’s business unit finance groups got
exactly what they needed. Their analysts were now able
to create annual budget and year-to-date views quickly
and have easy access to key metrics such as capital
expenditures by cost center, resource and activity.
In addition to the increased analytic capabilities,
the Cognos solution reduced the need for each business
unit to extract ad hoc data from mainframe systems.
The entire project paid for itself in about six months.
BI
before ERP?
BI is often something companies invest in to make up
for the shortcomings of their ERP reporting systems.
But deploying BI beforehand actually increased their
ability to better define information requirements for
the ERP system. "Gaining experience with an OLAP
tool can really help a power user to understand the
characteristics of well-designed information."
Cognos BI increased the value of the client’s now-installed
ERP system in other ways as well: the financial cubes
designed in the 30-day roll-out became the basis for
the design of the financial/management cubes from the
PeopleSoft EPM system.
Moreover,
Cognos users were able to move through the reporting
and analysis portion of the ERP learning curve much
quicker. "Cognos provides us with the ability to
rapidly identify financial issues and problems and thus
speeds our ability to address them; the speed at which
we can now analyze data is astounding."
Excerpts from this case study were taken
from the Cognos BI Strategy Newsletter
