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Narration text:
The Data Warehouse is where the State of Minnesota stores and retrieves information for
State Agencies. This update is about the progress of the project team charged with
supplying State Agencies with a cutting edge information storage and retrieval system.
This SWIFT Data Warehouse update was originally presented through iLinc to a technical
audience on June 8th. For the purposes of this presentation, terms and acronyms will be
defined and more explanations will be offered than during the original presentation.
Two acronyms you will encounter throughout this presentation include:
IA: Information Access – this refers to the information storage vehicle used to house State
information prior to the SWIFT project.
DW: a collection of data designed to support decision making for State managers. Data
warehouses allow users access to a broad variety of data to represent business conditions at
a given point in time.
Slide 3: Agenda
Where We’ve Been and Where We Are Now
New Data Warehouse, Information Access / Transfer and Reporting
What’s Next?
Once we gathered the requirements, we sent out a request for proposal and gathered
information about vendor products.
We acquired Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) which comes with predefined data
warehouse data models (a framework for storing typical business data), the infrastructure to
move data from the source to the warehouse, and OBIEE reporting tools which comes with a
number of pre-delivered reports and pre-established data relationships.
A datamart is a virtual framework used to hold and organize typical data used for a specific
business need – like Financials, Procurement, Human Resources, etc.
OBIEE: Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. This is the reporting and query tool
that allows access to the State data that will be stored in EPM. OBIEE contains pre-
established data relationships, so that neither technical staff nor users have to join tables to
retrieve all the data required for reporting. It also includes ways to move data from EPM to
use with Oracle’s Dashboards and Answers (queries and reporting) tools. It also allows users
to export data to other commonly used tools like MS Excel and Crystal Reports.
Narration:
For the Current Warehouse: It was determined that re-creating the current warehouse to fit
the new systems would possibly take even more effort than implementing the delivered EPM
modules.
This is because we have to figure out what we have and how it and EPM fit together, what
the relationships were, etc.
Because the Financial system is changing, a total redesign of the financial side of the
warehouse would have been required anyway.
Narration:
When we compared the current IA warehouse to what EPM delivers, some areas fit well, but
they don’t match 100%. During FIT/GAP sessions we didn’t know enough about the product
to identify what it would take to deliver data and reporting. But now we have more
understanding of what that is going to involve.
So we worked with Maximus, the vendor helping us deliver SWIFT, to develop a data
warehouse approach paper. This paper includes a recommendations to use the delivered
Oracle software (OBIEE and its front-end user modules Dashboards and Answers). Another
recommendation is that we follow documented best practices.
In addition, the legislature wants us to use more vendor products to minimize extra time to
develop additional systems.
We also signed a project change order for EPM/OBIEE that defines the warehouse scope and
includes a list of standard reports and extracts from IA DW that will be delivered as part of
the SWIFT project. An extract allows us to pull raw data from a data warehouse. This data
can then be loaded into another data warehouse, like EPM. Agencies can use extracts to
load their own databases, create a report, or pass the data on to whoever needs it.
Narration:
The current warehouse just stores data while EPM focuses on business intelligence -
information and how it’s structured.
EPM also comes with regularly scheduled vendor patches and fixes so State technical staff
can keep warehouse information up to date as the PeopleSoft application changes. Today,
the IA warehouse takes a lot of work on technical side to do the same thing. EPM reduces
the number of technical requirements agencies must provide and allows agencies to focus
instead on information needs.
OBIEE is a very robust report and query building tool. One significant change with OBIEE is
that technical users will not have to join tables in order to retrieve needed data for their
agencies. Also non-technical users won’t need to know what’s in data tables OR join tables
themselves if they create their own reports.
Narration:
We plan to use three pre-defined datamarts: Human Capital Management or HCM, Financial,
and Supply Chain.
The technical team will also be adding custom tables and fields that people currently using
to create reports, except for a couple of training tables.
Slide 9: Benefits of OBIEE
Contains vendor provided configurations
-Pre-built data / table relationships
-Pre-built analytics and reporting templates
Narration:
OBIEE comes with vendor configurations such as pre-built tables and data relationships right
out of the box.
There are also many pre-delivered reports that come with the product.
The technical team will customize data relationships, column names, and some reports to
meet State needs.
OBIEE provides a drag & drop interface to create new reports, as well as ability to interface
with other applications. Its reporting and querying tools, Answer and Dashboards, include
many of the same features that MS Excel and Crystal Reports offer: charts and graphs,
functions, pivot tables and more.
Users can download data to other applications such as PowerPoint, Excel, etc. There is a MS
Office plug-in that allows users to access data directly within Excel and PowerPoint that we
have yet to explore.
Last, users can have data delivered to other tools like Crystal Reports, etc. utilizing a web
interface or Object-based or Java-based connections through OBIEE.
Narration:
All financial reports will have to be recreated anyway, but the new tools should help that
happen faster. PeopleSoft structures data differently from the way that MAPS does. Existing
reports and data needs will be looked at and evaluated to ensure they still make sense.
OBIEE will be the supported reporting tool and does offer web-based reporting accessed via
the PeopleSoft portal. User training and support for OBIEE’s Dashboards and Answers tool is
being created.
Historical data will remain in the current IA data warehouse, although some historical HCM
data will be loaded into SWIFT if it is contained in the source system.
In some cases multi-year reporting may require you to use 2 systems (the old one and
OBIEE), especially in the case of Financials. We don’t have a date for removing the old
warehouse, but at this point, it is not part of the project.
If you need to use other tools like Crystal Reports, you will be able to use the same
infrastructure and security as Answers and Dashboards.
ODBC
-Access (Linked and Imported Tables)
-Crystal Reports
-SQL Tools
JDBC
-Java Application (Standalone and Oracle Stored Procedure)
-SQuirreL SQL Client
Narration:
A limited number of reports will be created out of the project. There will be 25 extracts and
25 reports created by the project team.
Agencies can modify delivered reports to create their own versions of the reports and own
report libraries.
Agencies, with the aid of their technical staffs, will be able to create their own dashboards.
Reports (Answers) are easy to build. Just pick the columns you want to show up in your
report, and drag and drop them into place. The Answers feature has many features similar
to MS Excel built in, like filters, pivot tables, etc.
Dashboards allow you to view critical data consistently at a glance. Not only will you be able
to view the data as graphs or metrics, you can set up the query so that if data goes above or
below your pre-set limit, you will be notified automatically.
OBIEE’s Object databased and Java data base connections will allow both technical and non-
technical users to pull data from EPM to be used in existing reporting tools.
January 2011
-Implement Financial and Procurement EPM plus SEMA4 updates
-Vendor provided Financials and Procurement datamarts with SWIFT customizations
-Additional HCM information with SWIFT changes required for SEMA4
-IA Warehouse continued to be updated
July 2011
-Implement EPM for FY 2012
-IA Warehouse updates discontinued (except FY 2011 close)
-IA still available for historical data
-EPM receives updates from SEMA4 and SWIFT
-New reporting through OBIEE
Narration:
It took awhile to determine the best approach and work through issues. Implementation on
the HCM side has a November 2010 target date. HR datamarts and tables that require no
structure changes will be available for testing and reporting then.
Financial and procurement implementation is scheduled for January 2011. In July we plan to
stop updating the old warehouse and focus only on the new system.
Agency Involvement
-SWIFT staff will work with identified agencies to determine statewide reporting needs
-SWIFT will be requesting agency assistance in deployment and support activities
Narration:
As you might guess our technical project team has plenty of work to do.
Because we’ve worked through issues and know the products better, we now are executing
a more rigorous report design process.
We will also be asking agencies for help with implementation and support.
Slide 14: Thanks for Viewing DW Quarterly Update!
Questions:
-Email SWIFT at Swift.Project@state.mn.us
-Contact your Agency Relationship Manager
-Visit the Website: www.Swift.state.mn.us