The next level of analysis is to drill down from the aggregates into a specific campus, college, department, employee group, student group, time period, etc.  At this second level, there is a need to see summarized data at the “unit of transaction level” – meaning an employee, student, or financial transaction.

For the set of selected metrics, our team delves into the details of the related ERP applications, getting data from all related systems so that data for the metric is complete and accurate. This is essential in providing a sound basis for analysis, feedback, and readjustment described in our GSAM methodology. Focusing on the lowest level of granularity provides a bird’s eye-view of the data connections and provides a guide for the implementation activities.
Researching each metric and making sure that related data from all systems is culled simultaneously are important elements in resolving the “depth” and “width” issues represented in the diagram below. Doing this post fact, that is after building a star schema and delivering content is very difficult. The questions should be asked when the metric is being designed and the before related ETL and report implementations.

Starting with executive support all the way to nightly-refresh support, each responsible party has to be equipped to deliver and held accountable for meeting the user community’s expectations.  BI, more than any other initiative gets the most “exposure” in terms of data quality and interaction with users.  A successful BI platform, without question requires high-quality and engaged executive support, process-focused and qualified architects and developers, and an independent group of thinkers and diligent refresh monitors who can think out-of-the-box and adjust the complex technologies quickly to deliver validated results each morning.

We engage with clients when we are able to work with executives to evaluate, set, and prioritize the BI content within the context of organizational goals.  With this context, our implementation teams are able to deliver successfully.

These metrics can be developed using a variety of frameworks.  The diagram below shows how a balanced scorecard approach can be used to measure the effectiveness of actions, strategies, and goals.  Other frameworks can be used to the replace customer, process, financials, and people (or talent) axes if the replacements are more pertinent to the organizational goals.

Entigence is a small and woman-owned business in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is authorized to do business on a GSA IT schedule.

Laboratory Information Solution (LIMS) for Healthcare

George Washington University is the largest institution of higher learning in the nation’s capital. Chartered by Congress in 1821, GW began as a college to develop educated clergy for the growing metropolitan area. GW now has eight major schools, offering hundreds of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs. According to the latest official figures, there are over 17,000 full-time and part-time students in fields as diverse as forensics, public health and museum education.

Information Systems and Services (ISS) is the university’s division responsible for the development and management of technology, across the entire enterprise. As part of its mission, ISS maintains an extensive inventory of hardware and software. Because multiple groups within ISS manage the assets, no single repository exists for maintaining information about the dynamics of hardware and software. Each ISS group may use a different method for making changes to, and reporting on, its inventory.

GW charged ISS with creating a system for tracking the hardware and software it owned and for monitoring changes to the inventory. The system ISS develops must be robust enough to eventually meet the needs of the entire university. It must also consider the reporting demands of ISS executives, who will use the information to make operational and strategic decisions.

ISS leadership assigned oversight of the initiative to the Technology Advisory and Strategy Committee (TASC), a cross-disciplinary group of ISS staff members. Directives were issued to gather requirements and draft high-level policies and methodologies. The ultimate goals were threefold: 1) prepare procedures for requesting changes to the hardware and software inventory, 2) develop a user interface for recording change requests and 3) design and code reports using the information captured in the change request system.  Entigence Corporation was hired to work with TASC and help support the planning process, coordinate some of the TASC assignments, make recommendations to strengthen the policies, procedures and designs and ensure that the metrics were aligned with the mission of ISS. Entigence lead the design and development of C3, an enterprise-level change management application that provided a metrics-based approach to management and streamlining of the processes and activities associated with any changes to hardware and software owned and managed by ISS.

ISS leadership assigned oversight of the initiative to the Technology Advisory and Strategy Committee (TASC), a cross-disciplinary group of ISS staff members. Directives were issued to gather requirements and draft high-level policies and methodologies. The ultimate goals were threefold: 1) prepare procedures for requesting changes to the hardware and software inventory, 2) develop a user interface for recording change requests and 3) design and code reports using the information captured in the change request system.  Entigence Corporation was hired to work with TASC and help support the planning process, coordinate some of the TASC assignments, make recommendations to strengthen the policies, procedures and designs and ensure that the metrics were aligned with the mission of ISS. Entigence lead the design and development of C3, an enterprise-level change management application that provided a metrics-based approach to management and streamlining of the processes and activities associated with any changes to hardware and software owned and managed by ISS.

Entigence has assisted the OCFO to enhance and maintain several vital applications.  Our consultants have provided process and functional support for budget formulation and budget execution processes, business intelligence, web development, database administration, Windows system administration, reporting system administration and report development services.  Among the highlights is providing support for:

• Compilation of the District’s operating budget and production of the annual budget book
• Compilation of the Capital budget and budget book production
• Design and development of the District’s financial data warehouse and development of key reports, multi-dimensional views, and executive dashboards to collect, track, and disseminate key performance metrics.

An executive dashboard with key performance indicators is available on the DC extranet at cfoinfo.dc.gov.  The Entigence team delivered the framework and content of this dashboard which recently received the equivalent of a “gold medal” from an industry watchdog for promoting transparency.

We are proud to say that this particular client considers us to be subject matter experts in their domains and relies on us for business process re-engineering efforts nearly as often as our other services.  Our deep understanding of their metrics, drivers of their metrics, and the integration of data from multiple underlying systems is paramount in our ability to deliver the metrics focus that the OCFO needs to cope with the constant scrutiny from the constituents of the District of Columbia Government.

Office of Sponsored Research

At Northwestern University, Entigence designed and implemented a platform for metrics-driven business intelligence deliverables for the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR).  OSR managed $400M in research grants in 2007 to support 90 school-based centers 20 university centers over two campuses.  In 2007, OSR implemented a COTS package for higher education research management.  This application was poorly documented with minimal database documentation.  Our consultants worked closely with OSR staff and system integrators to develop a sophisticated set of metrics, dimensional models and business processes to manage all aspects of proposals, awards, cost analysis, principal investigator analysis, trending, and standard and ad hoc reporting.  The end result – a functionally sophisticated metrics-based reporting platform – was extremely well-received by the user community.

Corporate Finance

Along with the OSR implementation, Entigence played a critical role in the implementation of the PeopleSoft Finance data warehouse called EPM.  It was generally accepted during the implementation of PeopleSoft Finance that a large part of “go-live” success was dependent on the success of a handful of extremely complex, highly-flexible, metrics-based enterprise reports.  Entigence took charge of designing and guiding the implementation of the necessary services to deliver the desired results.  Our knowledge and experience with higher education financial processes and commonly used metrics, commitment control, DW design best practices, Oracle and Cognos provided to be the winning combination in providing the user community with the level of sophistication and flexibility they required in these reports.

Our services at Northwestern were rooted in our focus on metrics.  For commitment control, a critical business function for managing finances effectively, our consultants became ingrained in the processes in order to develop the operational metrics that the university would benefit from.  We then methodically used the technologies to our benefit to deliver not just the metrics but an integrated platform to support tracking of the metrics and reviewing the underlying transactions that affected the metrics.

Facilities Management

Entigence was engaged by Northwestern during the implementation of a facilities management application. Although initially brought on to create a reporting solution for the facilities data, we approached the problem with a metrics focus asking ourselves and Northwestern constituents what are the SLAs and drivers that impact business processes in this area.  From that understanding we developed the metrics and the ability to slice the metrics by a variety of business attributes to allow business users to perform the SLA-based services and reconciliation of asset finances with G/L functions.

Designed and implemented an admissions data warehouse for undergraduate and graduate student admissions.  This initiative was of strategic importance to the University given competitive pressures related to admissions.  Designed and created cubes for measuring key performance metrics in Cognos for admissions data using a variety of related business attributes.   Working closely with University admissions and IT we designed a series of drill through reports using Report Studio to analyze the details behind the aggregates underlying the metrics.  The data warehouse extracted data from the SunGuard Banner product suite.  Cognos dimensional models were customized to allow the design and development of enterprise-level standardized or managed reports along with a robust ad hoc reporting environment.    Entigence assisted with requirements gathering, design, and development of reports and cubes.

Although at first glance, this engagement may present itself as an IT implementation, the nature of the business processes and stakeholders actually made this an extremely performance-driven exercise.  The Ivy League universities, as it is well known in the industry, are very competitive and vie for the same pool of highly-qualified candidates.  In this climate, every initiative is keenly driven by inherent ROI focus primarily in terms of effectiveness.  Business users are extremely driven by this focus and are very demanding of all business intelligence deliverables from the point of view of operational metrics.

In our work with the IT organization, we maintained the metrics-focus and delivered requirements that were insightful and a framework for business intelligence that the client found very valuable.

A quote from then-Deputy CIO is presented below:

“Entigence’s methodologies and approach for business requirements will have a long-term and positive impact on our team.”

• Assistant Vice-President and Deputy CIO, Administrative Information Systems

Conducted a strategic analysis of University of Chicago administrative systems environment related to data access and reporting, as well as industry and peer best practices for data warehousing/business intelligence.  This resulted in a set of plans and strategies for their in-house  Business Information Services (BIS) division.  The plans included timeframes for enterprise research administration (ERA), student reporting, budget and staffing to support implementation of ERA and student subject areas, organization structure, high-level architecture diagrams based on review of existing reporting silos,  training strategy, security recommendations for reporting including scenarios and trade-offs, and ETL strategy based on standards used during Sybase to Oracle conversion.

From a performance management perspective, this engagement is more focused on IT processes and enrollment management processes.  Quality and effectiveness metrics for models, applications, and service-orientation for information delivery were reviewed by us as part of the deliverables.

At Georgetown University, Entigence is currently implementing a metrics-drive business intelligence platform to manage the entire student lifecycle from recruitment to graduation.  Georgetown’s reporting project was implemented in tandem with a large-scale, enterprise-wide replacement initiative of their student system.  Legacy applications were replaced with the Banner suite from SunGuard.  Like Northwestern, Georgetown executives were cognizant that the Banner go-live was heavily dependent on the success of the business intelligence and metrics rollout.

Entigence Corporation was brought onboard to architect and deliver a comprehensive reporting ”portal” for the user community.  The project approach of a 3-tier delivery model – start with aggregate analysis, drill down to the primary details and then drill down to the secondary details – was a “hit”.  Users loved the consistency this approach provided in navigating the enormous amount of data in Banner.  100+ metrics and reports were delivered at go-live and the demand for additional reports continues several months after go-live.  Reports have been showcased in meetings with senior Georgetown executives on several occasions.

For each business area, our focus was on the core metrics required by the constituents and maximizing the flexibility to track the metrics given the underlying applications.  Operational metrics and reports for the following business areas were part of our engagement:

• Recruitment and Admissions
• Registration and Enrollment
• Student Accounts
• Student Health
• Financial Aid

One of the highlights of our engagement was the creative way in which we assisted the Registrar’s office in transitioning from a manual- and paper-based course scheduling processes to a Cognos-Word based electronic process.  We created reports to produce one page reports for every course offering for a particular term.  These PDFs were automatically parsed by a PDF-to-Word converter and the resultant Word documents were put on a shared network site with tracking turned on.  Departments across the University edited their course offerings and saved final copies of the Word documents in a new location for the Registrar’s office to pick up and process through Banner.

This engagement highlights the versatility with which we are able to navigate executive focus, business processes, performance management, and systems implementation in a cross-functional, integrated, and effective manner.

We are currently engaged with a publicly-traded University experiencing significant growth.  Retained by the executive team to design and create executive metrics for each business area so that cross-functional analysis to support the strategic vision is achieved by the executives on an as-needed basis in a timely and accurate manner.  Business processes include:

• Marketing: lead and conversion analysis.  Cross-functional analysis of marketing representatives through the life cycle of the student to ensure the quality of the leads through to graduation.  Metrics management for actual versus budget for marketing overall costs and costs per lead and headcounts.  In a future phase, advertising spend analysis and metrics will be addressed.
• Admissions:  Metrics for managing the admission of new recruits, and marketing to existing students to ensure continuity to graduation.  Score carding and dashboarding against targets.
• Enrollment Management:  Designing dashboards and metrics for all aspects of enrollment management and measuring productivity by all relevant business attributes in a manner that is tightly integrated with marketing and admissions processes.
• Student Accounts and Student Support:  Metrics for accounts receivables to support quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year comparison of collections and balances.  Cross-functional metrics for enrollment and student accounts to support forecasting and growth management.
• Legal and Institutional Research:  Metrics and reports for meeting compliance regulations set forth by accreditation agencies and state and local jurisdictions in 50 states of the US.

Our services at this University are comprehensive:  from delivering a core set of metrics that are relevant and based in best-practices to the implementation of the IT functionality to support cutting across multiple applications to deliver the expected results and framework to the stakeholders.  This high visibility project is being monitored at the highest levels in the organization since executives have invested financial and HR capital to ensure that the resultant platforms allow the organization to be metrics-driven in a top-down approach down to the lowest levels in the organization.

Our clients find success in our design methodology which includes a three tier approach to deliver aggregates, lists, and profiles through successive drill throughs with increasing levels of detail.   This method provides consistency and flexibility to the users.  The reports are heavily prompted so that a handful of reports answer a gamut of structured and ad hoc questions.  Sungard’s Operational Data Store (ODS) and PeopleSoft’s EPM provide the basis of the report content.  We work closely with our clients to enhance and tune ODS and EPM for optimal performance.  This included creating indexes, modifying delivered ETLs, designing and deploying new ETLs, and other performance tuning tasks such as materializing views, partitioning tables, and optimizing Cognos reports.

The end result is that business users are pleased with the reports developed by Entigence and continue to rely on our deliverables to-date.   Business processes supported in our student reporting projects include financial aid, student finance, recruitment, admissions, registration/enrollment, graduation, student health, Institutional Research reporting, and advancement.

The following are statistics were published,  shortly after go-live, by the CIO of an organization we worked with :

• Transactions are flowing through the system and business is getting done at surprisingly high rates considering the number of changes with which the organization has had to contend.  There are over 11,000 user IDs in the new system.
• In six weeks after go-live, users entered over 6,000 requisitions, including 2,200 through the electronic marketplace and over 3,000 expense reports, providing reimbursement to almost 2,000 unique employees.  As we closed the first month after go-live, at least one successful processing of each major interface had occurred and all of these data were accessed via the Cognos Business Intelligence tool.

We are able to assist our clients with the use of Net Promoter Scores (NPS) in the collection and analysis of data using business units, marketing attributes, bio-demo data and other business attributes.  Through statistical tools and methodologies, we assist the client assess the relationship between NPA and its drivers.

We conduct strategic analyses of administrative systems with respect to enterprise-level data access and reporting.  These analyses have yielded plans and strategies that include the following:

• Project and milestone planning for enterprise reporting initiatives
• Budget, staffing and organizational structure to support these initiatives
• High-level architecture diagrams based on review of existing reporting areas
• Training strategies
• Security recommendations for reporting including scenarios and trade-offs
• ETL strategies with master data management

Quality and effectiveness metrics for models and applications, as well as service-orientation for information delivery are reviewed by us as part of the deliverables.

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BI, Analytics, and Dashboards

Our Methodology – 360° View of Metrics

Methodology

Along with technology assessment, we evaluate what methodology best suits your business needs. You may require a full-scale enterprise data warehouse or a mix of data warehouse, data mining, and OLTP reporting components. Your efforts may be driven by mandates and legislative deadlines or you may be embarking on an enterprise solution, which will need to be done in phases. We help you discover the methodology or combination of methodologies that will work best for you.

IT

Once you have laid the foundation of your BI effort, we assist you to build, validate, rollout, and train your users in the new solution.

We are proud to say that our framework has provided repeated success to our clients. It is simple. It is logical. And it is driven by one overriding factor: your business need drives the solution that we will develop. Unlike other frameworks that pigeonhole you into a set way of creating BI solutions, our approach is flexible and ensures your success.

We start with asking our clients the most important questions: why are you doing this and what do you want to measure? This helps us to define a business-case which supplies the drivers and sponsors needed to create a successful solution. Typical outputs of this stage include a mission statement along with a list of executives who will be directly responsible for achieving the desired outcomes.

Strategies

Based on the needs of our clients, we determine the strategy to meet the desired outcomes. Is the need specific enough to warrant an ad hoc reporting environment? Or are the floodgates going to open once you have a BI solution, in which case a value-added environment is a critical success factor. Strategy discussions lead to a vision statement for the project.

Roadmap

Along with the sponsors, we develop consensus on how to bridge the gap between the current state of reporting and analysis to the desired outcomes. Roadmaps include of high level plans and timelines.

Technologies

Once you know what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it, we encourage and assist you to find the right tools and technologies. We develop

Six Steps to Business Intelligence Success

To create a value-added BI environment, we encourage our clients to think top-down. Ask yourself: what do we want to measure, how will we get from here to there, what technologies will we use, and then create the building blocks that are required. At Entigence, we use our Six Steps to BI Success methodology to create successful BI solutions.

Email : information@entigence.com

Phone : (202) 429 8847

Email : information@entigence.com

Phone : (+91)80 4095 6724 ]]> http://entigence.com/contact-us-right-content/feed 0 http://entigence.com/bi-performance-management-right-content?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bi-performance-management-right-content http://entigence.com/bi-performance-management-right-content#comments Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:54:24 +0000 admin http://entigence.com/?p=99 Continue reading →]]>

Entigence has a repertoire of best practices for a variety of industries to help you adjust to this new reality in a short span of time. First, we help you discover strategies that are best suited for your organization. Then we lead you with designing and implementing a business intelligence-based performance management environment that is tightly tied to your strategic objectives. Our approach connects your performance to your strategic goals with direct and instantaneous impact.

Our market research services are closely tied to customer satisfaction studies be it as simplistic as Net Promoter Score (NPS) studies or customized customer satisfaction studies that involve multi-dimensional satisfaction measures. Our customer satisfaction studies are also complemented by high end analytics to identify drivers for customer satisfaction and can be integrated to CRM systems through our Enterprise Systems consulting services.

Our experience with large-scale enterprise products such as the PeopleSoft suite positions us to provide production support for the ERP applications as well. Entigence has recently embarked on expanding our team with resources who have over 10 years of experience with these ERP applications, specifically PeopleSoft. With the expansion of our team, our goal is to enter the systems integration domain for large-scale ERP initiatives as well as to provide production support for these initiatives.

In Fall 2010, the DC Government is planning to prepare use of our application for the sixth consecutive budget preparation. Since its inception, we have incorporated capital budgeting and position budgeting into our solution. The solution, Budget Formulation Application (BFA), is built on Microsoft’s ASP.Net platform with an Oracle band-end and Cognos for business intelligence. Please visit cfoinfo.dc.gov for a look at the dashboard that allows search and selection of executive views of operating budget data to the citizens of the District of Columbia.

Entigence is on GSA Schedule 70 and a small-and woman-owned business