Suneetha Vaitheswaran Director, Business Information Services University of Chicago

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

1. Sell the initiative and get funding 2. Procure tools, platform, and architecture 3. Design the bus matrix 4. Build and integrate each subject area 5. Create additional targeted data marts 6. Celebrate your EDW! 7. Add dashboards 8. Move into predictive analytics 9. Refresh your architecture 10. Work on Big Data 11. …

 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

 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

 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

 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

 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

ServiceData SourceKey Functionality Users Custom security User training KB IRF Financial FAS - 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 800XXX IRF Matrix, OBSFAS 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 200XXX IRF Payroll Payroll 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 450XXX IRF HREDB and PAF Provides 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 120XXX 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 60XXX AURA Grants DW AURA (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 380XXX AURA IRB DWAURA (Click) IRB Provides 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 150XXX SDW Graduate Teaching Gargoyle Provides 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 100XX SDW Enrollment, Person Gargoyle, IRF HR Provides 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 120XXX BO Pilot /StudentGargoyle, IRF HR Provides 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 /ApplicantOGSA Provides graduate admissions offices with OGSA applicant information for reporting 40X Services 9

 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 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

 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

 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

 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..

 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

 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

 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

 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

 Broad span of control  Structured projects  Resource loading  Amazing team

 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