1. Lighting up “Fermidash” – Fermilab’s Executive Dashboard
NLIT
2012

2. Agenda
Explain the background, purpose, and objectives related to the Executive Dashboard (“FermiDash”)
Review a high level overview of the architecture and tools being used
Describe the approach for completing the project
Highlight the dashboard features and functions
Share lessons learned
Present the future phases and what they will deliver
NLIT FermiDash

3. About “FermiDash” Background Purpose
Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), Fermilab’s prime contractor, committed to providing an Executive Dashboard (“FermiDash”) in its contract with the Department of Energy.  Over the past year, a team of Fermilab’s staff and contractors implemented the first phase of FermiDash.
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to display crucial information in a clear and concise manner for making key decisions. The primary audience is Fermilab’s senior management, the Department of Energy, and the FRA board.
Over the past year the team implemented the first phase of FermiDash.  This phase included:
Implementing the infrastructure
Publishing a set of dashboards with key performance indicators (KPIs) that display statistics about the Laboratory’s:
business areas
management systems
contractor assurance systems
The operational structure to continue adding content and features as required for use in future phases.  
NLIT FermiDash

4. About “FermiDash” Objectives
To meet the contractual obligation for a management decision dashboard. We met this object ive by completing Phase 1 by the end of CY 2011
To provide a visualization of the lab’s key performance indicators (KPIs). This is an ongoing process, but there is much progress and momentum
NLIT FermiDash

5. Architecture Primarily based on Microsoft (MS) Platforms
MS SharePoint Enterprise Edition
PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer
Excel Services
Visio Services
Integrated Reporting Services
Site Collections to aggregate dashboards and KPIs into “FermiDash”
MS SQLServer Database
Provides data storage for cubes and data marts
SQLServer Reporting Services (SSRS) – Displays data via reports and KPIs
SQLServer Integration Services – Moves data from source data stores to data mart for use in Dashboards, KPIs, and Reports
SQLServer Analysis Services(SSAS) - Delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality
CUBE =
cube aggregates the facts in each level of each dimension in a given OLAP schema. The business intelligence industry uses the word "cube" because it best describes the resulting data. For example, let's consider our star schema. When you create a cube from that schema, you take the freight, quantity, discount, and other facts and add them up by city, by year, by city and year, and by every other possible combination of dimension and hierarchy level. Those calculations produce the following type of data structure:
DATAMART
The data mart is a subset of the data warehouse which is usually oriented to a specific business line or team. facts and dimensions
NLIT FermiDash

6. Architecture
A wide array of back end data stores that contain source data
Oracle databases of Financial, HR, Safety data
SharePoint lists containing data that was not already available in databases
Excel spreadsheets that had been used prior to the Dashboard being available
Web Pages
NLIT FermiDash

7. NLIT FermiDash

8. Approach
Wanted to leverage existing SharePoint and SQL Server platforms
Bring in business intelligence experts with Microsoft specific skill sets to accelerate the project
Provide a solid infrastructure
Work on “low-hanging fruit” dashboards. Meaning dashboards that can be derived from existing data sources and/or manually created reports.
NLIT FermiDash

9. There are eleven management system areas
Business Operations
Communications
Corporate Governance
Engineering
ES&H
Finance
Information Technology
Performance Planning
Quality
Science
Stakeholder Relations
NLIT FermiDash

10. FermiDash – Welcome Page
NLIT FermiDash

11. FermiDash – Business Operations (1)
NLIT FermiDash

12. Fermidash – Bus. Ops. – HR - Balanced Score Card(1.1)
NLIT FermiDash

13. FermiDash – Communications (2)
NLIT FermiDash

14. FermiDash – Corporate Governance (3)
NLIT FermiDash

15. FermiDash – Engineering (4)
NLIT FermiDash

16. FermiDash – ES&H (5)
NLIT FermiDash

17. FermiDash – ES&H – Traffic (5.1)
NLIT FermiDash

18. FermiDash – Finance (6)
NLIT FermiDash

19. FermiDash – Information Technology (7)
NLIT FermiDash

20. FermiDash – Performance Planning (8)
NLIT FermiDash

21. FermiDash – Quality (9)
NLIT FermiDash

22. FermiDash – Science (10)
NLIT FermiDash

23. Fermilab – Science – Detector Performance (10.1)
NLIT FermiDash

24. FermiDash – Stakeholder Relations (11)
NLIT FermiDash

25. “Baseball Card” Display
These are used to provide a visual menu to the various dashboards available. They make finding information quicker and easier.
NLIT FermiDash

26. Lessons Learned
Leveraging a full service consulting firm seems to provide greater value and less risk than relying on a single expert
Reports that appear to have been generated based on existing data, may not be based on the data, and/or may need to have extra processing to achieve desired format or message.
Needed to provide structure to capture and store data that was only available in documents, presentations, or spreadsheets.
Data owners needed reassurance that providing the data and support for the system was not going to come back to haunt them.
Changing peoples frame of reference from Reports to Dashboards can differ based on each person.
B2 = Meaning that just because we found a report doesn’t mean it was generated from a backend data store. It might have been hand generated. So, we needed to also build a way to capture the data in a way that could be used with the dashboard.
NLIT FermiDash

27. Future Direction More Automation
Better systems for collection, storing data
Migrate reports and basic dashboards to dashboards using more advanced dashboard capabilities
Provide more granular levels of role based security
Add more content (dashboards, KPIs, Reports, etc.)
Provide ability to analyze data
Provide data, KPIs, reports to lower level managers
B3 = Some of the current dashboards are fairly “reportish” there is a desire to make these more visual and easy to understand macro level status.
NLIT FermiDash

28. Conclusion
Questions Comments Discussion
NLIT FermiDash