cognos at the university of texas at...
TRANSCRIPT
Cognos at The University of Texas at Austin Raise Your IQ!
Fred Friedrich, Associate Vice President and Controller Cathy Lester, Director, Controller IT Services The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin
Ranked 15th in world by Times London 2004
$1.6 Billion Budget
$400 million in Research Dollars (R-1)
17,000 Faculty and Staff
50,000+ Students 11,000 degrees awarded annually
Longhorn Pride
No. 1 Texas 45, Oklahoma 12
Baseball sweeps Florida to claim sixth College World Series Championship (June 2005)
Project Information Quest (IQ)
Problem Summary
Data-rich, information-starved
Reliable transactional systems; weak reporting
Programmers required to extract information
Coded data required interpretation
Project Information Quest Approach
Crawl, walk, run
Start small and grow in manageable increments
Measure results before investing more
Leverage existing systems by adding reporting tools
Critical Success Factors
• Trust
• Fair Process
• Data Stewardship / Ownership
• Single Version of the Truth
Data Warehouse Subject Areas
Student Info Financial Info
Alumni/Donor Info
Facilities
Human Resources Info
Research Info
Faculty & PBIS info
Project IQ Infrastructure
Activity after Phase 1 Release (1st 10 months)
• 165 People Trained 4 hours each / 39 class sections
• 180 cubes available
• 382 reports available
• 35,233 reports run by 450 people
Live Demonstration
Demonstration of how we use Powerplay cubes to answer business questions
Business Scenario 1 – Resource Allocation
The Liberal Arts Dean receives competing requests for additional Teaching Assistants (TA’s or AI’s) from Economics and Government in Fall Semester. The HR and Course Enrollment cubes can be used to look at trending information.
compare number FTE’s of TA’s and AI’s across years
(resources used)
compare semester credit hour production/ #sections / enrollment across years
(productivity)
Business Scenario 2 – Course Planning
During course planning, each college must plan how many sections of courses to offer each semester.
The academic affairs deans want to be able to analyze what majors from other colleges are taking courses within their colleges.
Business Scenario 3 - KPI
One of our key performance indicators monitored by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is the number of undergraduate semester credit hours taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty.
Our Provost wants to compare across colleges and time.
The course enrollment cube allows visual comparisons, plus drill-downs to ask questions about courses taught by non-tenured faculty – what classifications of instructors are being used? what kinds of courses fall into this category?
How Did We Do This?
Executive Sponsors, Steering Committee, Stewardship Committee
Project Director
Project Manager
10 Full-time Analysts (grown from 3)
Key Personnel: Data Architect, Oracle DBA, Liaison between IT/Business Users
Cognos Products
Series 7.3 MR2
Powerplay
IWR
NoticeCast
Cognos ReportNet 1.1 (new)
Cognos Planning Analyst (new)
Key Principles
Absolute necessities:
Build relationships
Identify primary customers to serve
Manage expectations…”Crawl, Walk, Run”
Data Stewards must own responsibility for accurate data, and perform extensive data cleansing
Train and retrain (if necessary) to ensure highest ROI
Key Principles - Continued
Important for us:
Meet grassroots (College level) needs first and needs of central administration second.
Fund project centrally.
Start with steward area (in our case Financials) that is ready and willing to invest
Key Principles - Continued
Constant involvement of assistant/associate deans and VP’s in all phases
Business users trained on OLAP multi-dimensional concepts and design to do requirements analysis.
ROI – A Few Benefits so far…
1. More strategic decision-making (VWR Example)
2. More reliable legacy systems
3. Better and quicker information resulting in more collaborative/trusting relationships with constituents
Time Spent in Decision-Making
Data Gathering
Analyze & Interpret Consider Options
Consider Options
Information Gathering Analyze
BEFORE
AFTER
ROI: Time Saved in Report Preparation of AFR
Annual Financial Report: 705 Hours Less (partial timesheet captured here)
Early Success Story: College of Engineering
“I was able to put together the financial part of our college’s 6 year accreditation survey in 1 ½ days with our Cognos financial cube, as opposed to several months the last accreditation cycle. And I was able to give our dean a special report that he needed on the spot (in 15 minutes) just the other day.” Cindy Brown, Assistant Dean
Next Challenges:
More complex business questions
Cost of Instruction
Time to Degree
More Sophisticated Revenue Forecasting
Faculty Profiles (IBM/Cognos Pilot Project)
