leveraging cognos bi to support research (pre-award
TRANSCRIPT
Leveraging Cognos BI to Support Research (Pre-Award) Reporting:
A Best Practice Approach
Higher Education Virtual Conference 2008
Presenter – John Ewan
Manager Financial Reporting Team, Project Café
(Financial Replacement Initiative)
Over 9 years of business intelligence / data
warehousing experience at prestigious organization
such as Arthur Andersen and MicroStrategy
Served on large and complex implementations such
as the one currently underway at Northwestern
At Northwestern provides oversight to all Cognos related reporting deliverables for the financial system replacement initiative
With massively parallel development activities underway - on-site at Northwestern and offshore in India - John's talent and experience on the management, process, and technical aspects of business intelligence and data warehousing are valuable
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Presenter – Rumy Sen
Founder and President of Entigence Corporation,
Strong business-focused technical skills uniquely
positions Entigence to deliver successful solutions
using technologies such as Cognos8
Entigence:
Provides best-practice-based strategic and operational oversight and BI implementation services to Northwestern’s reporting initiative
Consultants have managed the development of multi-tiered business applications using web technologies, relational databases and commercial ERP applications
Entigence has served prestigious institutions such as Northwestern, Brown, George Washington, Wake Forest, UNC-Chapel Hill
Entigence is a Cognos Global Partner
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Research @ NU
International recognition and pioneering research in genetic medicine, nanotechnology, biochemistry, neuroscience, cancer research, etc.
Annual research budget $1.5 billion, more than $416 million in sponsored research
Hundreds of interdisciplinary teams within Northwestern and partners at Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, and local universities
More than 90 school-based
centers and 20 University
centers on two campuses
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Business Needs
University community requires access to pre-award information
Central offices such as Office of Sponsored Research
Schools such as Feinberg School of Medicine
Departments
Research Centers
Reporting needs are wide-ranging
Single and multiple request and award analysis, Principal Investigator analysis, longitudinal analysis
External reporting to sponsors and regulatory authorities
Forecasting and trend analysis
Ad hoc analysis
Reports that cross organizational boundaries for interdisciplinary analysis
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Cognos @ NU
Northwestern owns licenses to Cognos8 product suite
Tool selected for all enterprise reporting
Currently used for HR reporting
Cognos8 on Windows with databases on grids
ReportStudio, QueryStudio in production
Plans for AnalysisStudio
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Enterprise Applications @ NU
Project Café: Financial Systems Replacement Initiative
PeopleSoft Finance for financial management
InfoEd for proposal tracking
FAMIS for facilities management
InfoEd Reporting
First reporting increment for Cafe
Cognos positioned Café to provide the type of centrally managed and distributed reporting environment that Northwestern requires
Reporting Challenges
Source data highly normalized, not the best scenario for Cognos
Reporting initiative in parallel to implementation of a frequently evolving source application
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Immediate Benefits from Cognos
A one-stop reporting site
Organized delivery of standard and ad hoc
reports
Secured access via use of public and private
folders
Ability to group reporting
items into “packages”
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Click to edit Master title style
Drag and Drop Ad Hoc
Reporting
Immediate Benefits from Cognos
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Click to edit Master title style
Flexibility through prompted and formatted reports
Immediate Benefits from Cognos
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Challenges
Source application database structures highly normalized while Cognos8 performs most efficiently and predictably with star schemas or dimensional models
Ad hoc reporting is more intuitive with stars
Reports created directly against normalized database had constraints
Difficult to modify or validate
Production constraints impacted reporting and vice-versa
Metadata not easy to comprehend, too many tables and joins
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Evolution of Cognos Implementation
Take 1: Create Reports against Source Database
Compressed timeline for delivery of reports
16 real-time reports created against source database
Cognos model very complex, too many tables and joins
No ad hoc reporting
Deadline met successfully
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Slowly Moving towards Stars
Take 2: Hybrid Approach
Created “stars” in database through the use of materialized views
Fairly functional
Acceptable performance
Team re-created 13 reports against MVs and left 3 pointing to source database for real-time needs
Issues with MVs
SQL difficult to maintain, easy to break
No metadata for developers
Significant impact as source data structures changed
Slow development cycle
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The Best/Recommended Approach
Take 3: ETL and StarsETL = extract, transform, load
Implement data transformation through ETL processes
Oracle Warehouse Builder
Mappings easier to maintain
Metadata available to developers
Shorter development cycle
Cognos performance significantly improved
Issues? None so far with Cognos
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Net Results
In three months since release:Over 80 ad hoc reports
17 standard in production and 12 more to be released in February
Reports provide prompts, master-detail and drill functionality
Café functional team and business users are building trust in the content of the reporting platform
Acceptable development cycle
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From the Director of Cafe
“I am pleased to announce that we have reached our second major go-live milestone on the project - …Proposal Tracking module viewing access and corresponding reporting out of the Cognos BI tool.
What does this mean? In short, it means that we have achieved a major goal of increasing access to research data for the NU community. In longer terms, we have begun to roll out view-only access to a set of screens in InfoEd to faculty and administrative staff involved in research. They will also receive access to about 15 reports in the Cognos BI tool. The two pieces together will be a powerful tool to the community for managing their grants. Even more importantly, it shows our ability to roll out systems to a distributed audience, not just central offices.”
-- Jason Schober
Northwestern University
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Conclusion
Make reporting an integral part of ERP rollout
Development cycle for the first round of reports is longer than you think
ETL is an absolute must for predictable and accurate results!
Cognos is a strong product suite for meeting simple to complex reporting needs
Business users are pleased with Cognos reporting functionality
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Thank You
Contact Information
John Ewan, email: [email protected]
Rumy Sen, email: [email protected]