The State of North Dakota. proudly submits to the NASCIO Awards Committee

Transcription

1 The State of North Dakota proudly submits to the NASCIO Awards Committee Office of Management and Budget s Business Intelligence PeopleSoft Project (BIPP) in the Data, Information, and Knowledge Management category

2 B. Executive Summary North Dakota rolled out ConnectND in This was their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for Financials, Human Capital Management and (because the rollout was in conjunction with the ND university system) Campus Solution using the PeopleSoft product. The state recognized that in moving from a 30-year old mainframe system to a modern ERP product, the new system was going to provide significant changes to the data it provided out-of-the-box and it didn t make sense to convert the thousands of reports until Business/Functional users had a chance to get used to the new system and identify true gaps in reporting. In 2008, the state began the process to deploy a business intelligence and reporting solution for ConnectND. The Request for Proposal and analysis phase ran almost a year and the deployment began in March of The project built upon the enterprise instance of the Cognos business intelligence tool. Working closely with an external integrator, the state deployed a solution that not only provided the needed reporting, but also gave agency staff unprecedented access to their data. This solution also laid the foundation for several future initiatives. It has allowed us to improve the state s transparency capabilities by publishing reports via a web portal. Agencies gained a common tool to begin mixing other program data with their financial data to perform more data-driven decision-making. Finally, the solution is the foundation for improving the production system s performance by giving us the ability to archive data off the production system and yet still be able to access it for reporting purposes and aligning the data to meet records retention requirements. It is with great pleasure that we submit this nomination for award. Sincerely, Dr. Lisa Feldner ND CIO Page 2 of 7

3 C. Description Problem/Business Need At the conclusion of the North Dakota PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HR) and Financials (FIN) implementation (known as ConnectND) end user reporting was very limited regarding accessing transactional data and the impact on the transactional system limited the reporting made available. Working together, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and state agencies identified the following business needs regarding accessing and presenting the PeopleSoft data. I. Reporting needs a. Business/Functional users without IT experience needed a user friendly selfservice reporting and query tool. The tool should be intuitive for Business/Functional users to create queries, reports and distribute reports b. Managers and IT Coordinators need the capability of publishing information (e.g. report distribution, bursting, and portal integration) c. Management needed the ability to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) metrics for HR and FIN and the ability to respond to exceptions in a timely fashion by drilling into the details of these KPIs d. The solution needed to provide predefined reports with the ability to run them on demand e. Agencies required the ability to access reports throughout a month, fiscal year, biennium and, at times, a previous biennium. Prior to the project, the PeopleSoft reports were limited to storing for only 90 days. The Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse (BI/DW) solution needed to accommodate the duration and access to reports which fit agency needs. f. The data pulled into queries by Business/Functional users to build ad hoc reports needs to be easily identifiable/recognized from a Business/Functional perspective g. The solution needed to run ad hoc reports without impacting production transactional system (on demand reporting) II. III. Additional business needs a. Improve system performance by reducing the amount of data stored in the transactional system b. Retain more years of data in a reporting system c. Provide an environment capable of expanding the user base beyond back office financial and HR staff to front line program managers d. Provide public access of data or the means of publishing to the public Technology related needs a. Ability for IT to deploy additional data marts while remaining affordable b. High availability Page 3 of 7

4 IV. c. Fit within the overall state BI and DW strategy Out of Scope a. The North Dakota University System (NDUS) PeopleSoft data b. NDUS HCM and Fin users c. Budget planning information d. Billing applications as well as other non-peoplesoft applications, such as the federal reporting, Budget and Reporting System (BARS), performance management There were a number of challenges the project team identified prior to the project start: Limited resources as this is a new initiative without dedicated resources tied to the project Limited knowledge as this is a new technology The project team determined that we could mitigate both of these risks by hiring a vendor with experience in deploying this type of solution. Overall Business process change within agencies may need to occur. The team mitigated this by ensuring agency staff was highly involved in the cube development, testing, and training process. The HR BI/DW capabilities are reliant on PeopleSoft functionality that the state has not implemented yet. The data needed for reporting may not be available as a result. The team mitigated this risk by ensuring all development was flexible enough to accommodate data from the Recruiting, Enterprise Learning Mgmt. and Talent Mgmt. systems that were part of the strategic plan. The state deemed that an RFP process was the correct solution to best determine a viable product and implementation that would fit the business and technical requirements. The Information Technology Department (ITD) and OMB followed State Procurement Office (SPO) best practices in issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP). After review of the proposals and presentations made by the top 3 vendors, the evaluation committee issued an Intent to Award to the Cognos proposal. Contracts were negotiated with Cognos (for the software) and their proposal partner Infolink (for services). Solution BIPP is a Cognos (8.4) web-based reporting solution that allows for secure, scalable multi-dimensional analysis of selected General Ledger, Human Resources and Project data. The product provides CUBE Reporting which is more powerful and flexible than traditional relational database query reports. It also relieves the reporting stress that is currently placed on the PeopleSoft system while offering an easy-to-use web interface to meet most users needs. We created 6 CUBES for this project. The solution includes an Operational Data Store (ODS) or stage database where specific information tables are extracted and loaded from the PeopleSoft production environment on a nightly basis. Cognos software is then used to model and create the required reporting system (CUBES) to meet North Dakota s reporting objectives. The Page 4 of 7

5 Cognos solution allows for further reporting extendibility by the state should they decide to build more CUBES. Schedule/Budget Metrics The project began execution in March The project deployed over three phases. Deployment one was for general ledger and budget data. Deployment two was HR data and deployment three was the rest of the financial data. The original end date was October The actual implementation date was March This was a 50% over schedule variance. Other Project Details The original budget was $929,532. The actual cost was $853,117 for an 8.2% under budget variance. The team recognized issues during the initial deployment so they conducted a lessons learned session and re-planning effort. The team increased the schedule to allow additional time for deliverables and deliverable reviews. The team felt that they had gained a lot of knowledge in the process so determined to conclude the Vendor contract following the second deployment (HCM). State only resources used for the remaining deployment. This allowed the project to come in under budget even after a four-month schedule delay. As noted in the risks, business intelligence was still a new technology for the state. We were still working out our Center of Excellence (CoE) and processes in this area. Once we were complete with this project, we were able to leverage this data to create our first public reporting website ( as a followon project. The state had already deployed Cognos so we were able to leverage that installation and contract to keep our costs down. The NDUS or another public entity using PeopleSoft and Cognos could leverage this solution. A key component of the project was customized training using real North Dakota data. The project ensured that many agencies were deeply involved in the development of the system and spread awareness of the new solution. D. Significance When North Dakota deployed ConnectND, we recognized that in moving from a 30- year-old mainframe system to a modern ERP system was going to have a significant impact on business processes. OMB decided to not reproduce most of the existing reporting. The team wanted everyone to get used to the new system and what it provided out-of-the-box before developing reports. This project not only provided the custom reports needed by agency staff, but also gave them the tools and ability to analyze the data themselves without needing an IT programmer to create additional custom reports. This also sets up the state for adding additional data elements allowing state programs to more easily perform data driven decision-making. Page 5 of 7

6 State agencies gained the most with this project. Accounting staff and program managers now have greater access to the data they need. The OMB staff also gained a powerful tool that allows them to create ad-hoc reports and quickly respond to gubernatorial and legislative requests. Agency staff can also respond more quickly to similar requests. This project was part of the long-term ERP implementation strategic plan. It was the first step in providing public reporting and aligned with the state s Enterprise Architecture by utilizing an enterprise tool. E. Benefit of the Project The project has widespread impact across all of North Dakota s state agencies. Agencies can now push both Fiscal and HR reports down to manager levels with each manager seeing only the data that pertains to them. Agency accounting staff can access and select the data for analysis. IT staff gained experience in business intelligence processes. We feel the innovation of the project was in the deployment of business intelligence across state government. This deployment sets up the state to begin to utilize the tool with other datasets, allowing agencies to begin performing true BI analysis. This project aligns with NASCIOs CIO priorities in shared services by not only fully deploying an enterprise tool, but also by providing a single solution across both fiscal and human resource data. Business Intelligence is also one of the priority technologies, applications and tools. The project met all of the following objectives. Objective 1: Identify business reporting requirements regarding the use of PeopleSoft Financial and Human Capital management data used within the Business Intelligence reporting solution. Measurement: Completed project assessment sessions and created a detailed list of reports representing business requirements. Objective 2: Provide an intuitive user-friendly tool enabling Business/Functional users without IT experience with the ability to access PeopleSoft HCM and Financial data and create queries and reports above what the PeopleSoft transactional system could provide. The solution should also allow agencies to distribute reports. Measurement: The project team completed an in-scope report list. They also conducted a survey identifying if the reporting solution meets the Business/Functional users needs. The Business/Functional team response indicated that the Cognos solution met their expectations. The project followed industry best practices with developing Cognos reports. They conducted end user acceptance testing of prototypes and final user acceptance testing approved the results. Objective 3: Expand the number of users accessing and receiving PeopleSoft HCM and Financial reports. Measurement: The Cognos application security enables the agency to distribute access to any agency user. DHS and DOT both used this layered security scheme extensively. Page 6 of 7

7 Objective 4: Provide the ability for management to monitor Key Performance Indicators (metric) for HR and FIN and provide the ability to drilling into the details of these KPI s. Measurement: The state outlined drill downs, cube access and reports within a functionality matrix and the system provides those features. Objective 5: Agencies require the ability to access reports throughout a Month, Fiscal year, Biennium and at times a previous Biennium. Currently the PeopleSoft reports are limited to storing reports for 90 days. The BI/DW solution will need to accommodate the duration and access to reports which fit agency needs. Measurement: The project followed the functionality matrix and confirmed that the function is available in the solution. Objective 6: When Business/Functional users build reports, the data pulled into queries needs to be easily identifiable/recognized from a Business/Functional perspective. Measurement: The project developed data labeling and reporting standards and measured the quality and effectiveness during iteration testing and end user acceptance testing. Objective 7: Run ad hoc reports without impacting production transactional system (Reports run on demand). Measurement: The project performed load tests and measured response times during system iteration testing. They also gained sign-off from the system administrators and technical architect regarding performance. Following the implementation, a systems performance-monitoring tool (Zenos) was set up. Finally, we received positive comments regarding response time in our survey. Objective 8: Develop a system that would enable the state to remove data from the transactional system while meeting all records retention requirements. (Note: The actual archiving of data is out of scope.) Measurement: The system was designed to allow for this functionality. The PeopleSoft archiving project will outline further retention needs and will develop the actual archiving processes. The solution is able to store reports past the 99-day duration currently available in the transactional system. Objective 9: Provide an environment capable of publishing to the public. Measurement: As noted previously, while public reporting was not a part of the scope of this project, setting the system up to enable that functionality was in-scope. We were able to leverage this foundation and now have an active public reporting website: Objective 10: Provide the ability for IT to deploy and maintain; ease of building and deploying additional data marts. Measurement: We were able to complete the final phase of the project using only state resources. This project fulfilled the business needs of the state, deployed using an enterprise product, brought additional expertise of business intelligence to state resources, and set up the state to begin deploying our transperancy website. Page 7 of 7