webfocus 8 portal delivers improved expense management for

WebFOCUS 8 Portal Delivers Improved Expense Management for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC)

Presented By:Stephanie Dennon, BI Program Lead, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research CenterRoger Panfil, President, RDC Business Solutions

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Speaker Biographies

Stephanie Dennon

BI Program Lead for Finance, Stephanie has worked for the past 14 years as a Financial Systems Analyst for Fred Hutch. Over the past 2 years Stephanie has transitioned her experience and knowledge of Fred Hutch business and business systems to WebFOCUS Business Intelligence for Finance. As lead on the selection and implementation projects, Stephanie has influenced all aspects of the WebFOCUS application at Fred Hutch.

Roger Panfil

President of RDC Business Solutions (“RDC Biz”) and has over 30 years of experience in the development, marketing, sale, and delivery of software and software-based solutions, with much of that experience involving technologies from Information Builders, Inc.

During his 10 years of employment with Information Builders, Mr. Panfil delivered multiple products to market, culminating his career with IBI as VP of Product Marketing for iWay Software. Mr. Panfil has a degree in MIS from IUP, and attended University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Evening School.

WF8 Delivers Improved Expense Management for FHCRC

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Organization Overview

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch | FHCRC) is headquartered in Seattle, Washington

A world leader in research to prevent, detect, and treat cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

Pioneers research ranging from addressing fundamental biological questions to developing breakthrough treatments; has saved countless lives.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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More than 3,000 faculty, staff, and affiliates support this vital effort, which has recently expanded into international sites in Africa.

Organization Overview

The center’s $400 million-plus annual operating budget is 80 percent grant-funded.

As a non-profit organization, FHCRC executives must pay close attention to the bottom line while upholding their mission to conduct research of the highest standards.

Meeting organizational goals in the face of declining grant money from the federal government and other sources only adds to the challenge.

Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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Financial Reporting Before WebFOCUS

Business Drivers – Environmental and System

Changes in funding and staffing levels stretches staff – do more with less

Need for greater flexibility to meet regulatory, compliance, or leadership demands for information

Reporting application was hard to use

Poor UI & data design

Performance issues

Limited functionality including export to other formats

Unsupported and unstable


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The Former System: Poor UI DesignFred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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Difficult to find a Project

No Memory; parameters must be re-entered for each new report

No consistency; different entry formats depending funding type

The Former System: Poor UI DesignFred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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Unnecessary extra options

Requires scrolling through page to access run button

The Former System: Gray-Scale Row-n-Column ReportsFred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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Research Project 1 Title

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Reynolds, Malcolm

NCI R01-GM24701-06

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• Limited export; users print and rekey into Excel

• No flexibility to add or modify based on requirements

• Slow performance; over 2 minutes to generate a single report instance

Targets for Improvement

Provide intuitive, simple user interface

Reduce labor-intensive, repetitive data entry

Improve system response time

Advance the reporting technology; provide modern toolset, including improved data export

Create flexible solution that can adapt to changing business requirements

Improve data quality; combine disparate data sets to show complete financial picture


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Designing HARP: Hutch Analysis & Reporting Portal

Application ArchitectureFred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

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• PeopleSoft Financials (FMS) v8.4

• MS SQL Server 2008

• iWay Data Migrator (ETL) 8009

• Toad Data Modeler

• MS SQL Server 2008

• Custom Reporting Portal

• WF 8009 Server • WF 8007 Client

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Project Management Approach

Hutch Analysis & Reporting Portal (HARP)

Deliverable: Create a portal-based application that provides award and project expense management reporting for up to 300 users in a modern, user-friendly and intuitive Web-browser interface.

HARP’s “Portfolio” tab is designed to show multiple graphical and interactive views of Award or Project summary balances

“Expense Classic” tab of the Portal shows the data in a similar – but modernized – take on the legacy reports

“Saved Parms” feature allows users to save and reuse parameter configurations reducing user effort


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Project Methodology

Hybrid methodology employed for the project

Waterfall for project oversight; tracking through phases of overall lifecycle

Rapid Application Development (RAD) for design, dev, test and deploy of individual deliverables

Joint Application Design (JAD)

Highly collaborative

Promotes user engagement & acceptance

Requirements-to-Release cycles decreased


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Project Timeline


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Design in a JAD SessionFred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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Then Mockup the UI in FlairBuilder for User CritiqueFred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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“Portfolio” and Expense Classic

views. Other tabs needed

Default set of 5 objects for

graphical and/or tabular view

of the data.

Users can remove an object from

view if wanted

Users can drag-n-drop

new objects to the Portal

from this link

Main Parameter Bar

Portfolio TabHutch Analysis & Reporting Portal (HARP)

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HARP: The Finished Product

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Lessons Learned

Key Project Success Factors

Met targets for improvement!

IBI’s ability to extend their consulting offering with a partner like RDC

Very strong commitment to the project’s end-goal and the newly acquired WF technology by FHCRC FMIS, IT and User teams

User community has accepted and is using the new technology

Post-implementation support requirements have been minimal


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Key Project Challenges

Underestimated overall size and scale of project

Resourcing issues

Offshore model didn’t work well for ETL work

Not enough time and resources initially spent on data modeling; necessitated re-work later

Business requirements were complex

Made a conscious effort not to cut business requirements’ complexity

Limited the overall scope of delivery

FHCRC had difficult transition to hybrid project methodology


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Key WebFOCUS Purchase Factors

Full BI toolkit ranging from pixel-perfect reports to advanced analytics

Ability to meet all targets for improvement (business requirements) in demonstrations

Excellent support from local IBI branch staff

IBI’s commitment to continually improving the WF product


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Q & A

Stephanie Dennon: 206-667-1272 (O) | [email protected]

Roger Panfil: 267-625-6336 (M) | [email protected]

Portfolio TabHutch Analysis & Reporting Portal (HARP)

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Driver Object: click on a Project

to re-paint the other 4 objects

Note multiple Views provided via tabs in the

container

Accordion report to drill into Expense

detail

Click on a bar to

activate drill report

Supplemental info for the project-in-focus

Main Parm Bar: Configure only

the needed search values;

run or save

Expense Classic TabHutch Analysis & Reporting Portal (HARP)

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Select Projects in Main Parm Bar

Main Parm Bar drives EC Parm Bar

All reports launched in new tabs so users can

drag to second monitor

Use of Active HTML to Further Engage the Users

Use of Active HTML to give the Users power once the data was returned to them in the Portal, e.g. self-sufficiency to Filter/Sort/Search the data.needs


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• Allows users to leverage functionality to perform some analysis

• Combines different projects and awards into a single output

• Eliminates need to create multiple versions of detailed reports

One-Click Export to ExcelFred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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Data download format allows users to

incorporate into templates easily

Full Excel functionality for deeper analysis

Data downloads can include multiple tabs; always includes report

parameters

Saved Parms FeatureFred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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Active Report with List of User Saved Parms

Detail for a Saved Parm record

Click to select Parm Set

Rename a Saved Parm record and add a long

description!

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Appendix: Saved Parms and Bulk Export

Saved Parms Feature

Retain report parameters or “parms” from each User session so each User could name and save their report parameters and retrieve them time and time again for future use:

One “System Saved Parm” record – Records the last user session, great for recovering User session after time-out

Many “User Saved Parm” records

Values for each control saved to the DB

Can be recalled at a later date with search feature via an Active Report

Can be used for downstream processing such as User report scheduled (feature not yet implemented)

Saved Parms DB design accounts for “Shared Parms” where a User can publish their parm set to one or more other Users (feature not yet implemented)


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Saved Parms Data BaseFred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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Account for “Shared Parms”

future deliverable

Store value set & attributes for each control on the tab-

in-focus

Bulk Export: One-Click to Take it All Away

Currently fine-tuning for release to users

Allows the user to export the entire contents of the Portfolio to either PDF or Excel


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Drop down menu allows users to select between PDF and

Excel output

Bulk Export: One-Click to Take it All AwayFred Hutch Cancer Research Center

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Each report object within Portfolio receives its own page in the combined PDF

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Question & Answer Sessionwww.rdccompanies.com | 267-573-4383

webfocus 8 portal delivers improved expense management for

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