Rakesh Tej Kumar Kalahasthi and Benson Hilbert SAP BI Practice, Bangalore, India

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1 394 Business Intelligence Journal July A SHORT COMMUNICATION ON - HOW A LEADING POWER DISTRIBUTION COMPANY EFFECTIVELY TRACKS BUSINESS AREAS LIKE SAFETY, FINANCE AND OPERATION FOR REGION AND BUSINESS WISE FOR EVALUATING THEIR KPI S - USING BUSINESSOBJECTS XCELSIUS DASHBOARDS Rakesh Tej Kumar Kalahasthi and Benson Hilbert SAP BI Practice, Bangalore, India rakeshtej@gmail.com, benhilbert.hilbert@gmail.com Abstract Management Reporting has traditionally been completed manually. On a monthly basis, information is collected from various disparate systems, summarized, analysed, aggregated, formatted and presented to the EMEA Regional Management Team by the 20th of each month, based on the prior month results. Currently, management reporting in the organization consists of Safety, Operational and Financial plus qualitative discussions and commentary. The goal of the Reporting Solution is to deliver and implement a consistent, personalized information delivery system that includes performance data (key performance indicators) which are relevant, accurate and transparent for use by regional management and executives to enable decision making each month. The solution should be delivered progressively whilst being portable to other regional businesses. This business requirements document refers to the long term reporting strategy objectives. Key words: Management reporting, KPI, SAP BI 7.0, Xcelsius, Commentary, EP. About Customer The Company is a global power company with generation and distribution businesses. Through our diverse portfolio of thermal and renewable fuel sources, company provides affordable and sustainable energy in 30 countries. Its workforce of 27,000 people is committed to operational excellence and meeting the world's changing power needs. Reporting Solution Goal The goal of the Reporting Solution is to deliver and implement a consistent, [1] personalized information delivery system that includes performance data (key performance indicators) which are relevant, accurate and transparent for use by regional management and executives to enable decision making each month. The solution should be delivered progressively whilst being portable to other regional businesses. This business requirements document refers to the long term reporting strategy objectives. Business Objective Our Service will facilitate and support the IT activities related to the Companies effort to define the technical design, construct and deliver an executive dashboard reporting solution (EXECDASH) based on the Business Requirements Document (BRD). Document Audience The intended audience of the document includes: Senior Vice Presidents Chief of Staffs Technical Director of EMEA Regional CFOs Vice President of Global Applications Regional Directors of Accounting Regional FP&A Managers Regional IT Director Business Intelligence Journal - July, 2011 Vol.4 No.2

2 2011 Rakesh Tej Kumar Kalahasthi, Benson Hilbert 395 Functional Requirements Process The [2] Management Reporting Project is designed to present information on a consolidated basis, or business for a pre-determined series of metrics. Release 1 scope metrics are presented from the following areas which form the basis for the pages in the model; Safety Operations Finance An Information Mapping document will be prepared to document the businesses definition of how certain metrics are measured and the source of the information plus the target page. This table will become the basis of information for further development. Business workshops will identify the source of information. About Xcelsius Interactive BI Dashboards through a flexible and easy to use point and click interface. Extensible library of visualization components. Many Data connectivity options XML, Web Service, etc with SAP & Non-SAP databases. Can deploy easily to many environments, Microsoft Office tools, Adobe, WebPages and Portals. Transform Excel spreadsheets into interactive data visualizations. Ability to perform Planning & Analysis. System Landscape Operation data from Comshare system. Safety data from Company Online system. Finance data from Flat files and BPC cubes. Data flows to BW system into respective Infocubes on top Multiproviders are created. BEx Queries with multiple formulae are created and used as infoproviders for dashboard development. Dashboard visualization is broadcast to users via . Allows rapid development of [3] dashboard visualizations, based on drag and drop interface. Figure.1 System Landscape Execdash Architecture EXECDASH architecture is based on creating a central data store that will house all metrics related information from the Safety, Finance and Operations source systems. The 3 sources Company online (Safety), BPC (Finance), Comshare (Operations) will be extracted and loaded to SAP BW. As shown below, the SAP BW environment will have a staging area where extracts from the sources are staged. Kumar K. R., Hilbert B. - A Short Communication on - How a Leading Power Distribution Company Effectively Tracks Business Areas Like Safety, Finance and Operation for Region and Business wise for evaluating their KPI s - Using BusinessObjects Xcelsius Dashboards

3 396 Business Intelligence Journal July Figure.2 Architecture diagram The staging area schema will have a set of reference tables to align Hierarchy master data from all source systems. Further the staging area will also serve as a place to add ETL logic for KPIs that are calculated by combining data from 2 or more sources. The KPIs are loaded into a BW Star Schema with the following dimensionality: Region, Sub-Region, Country, Business and Plant, Time. Data Flow for Safety Figure.3 Safety Data flow Business Intelligence Journal - July, 2011 Vol.4 No.2

4 2011 Rakesh Tej Kumar Kalahasthi, Benson Hilbert 397 Data Flow for Finance Figure.4 Finance Data flow Data Flow for Operations Figure.5 Operations Data flow Kumar K. R., Hilbert B. - A Short Communication on - How a Leading Power Distribution Company Effectively Tracks Business Areas Like Safety, Finance and Operation for Region and Business wise for evaluating their KPI s - Using BusinessObjects Xcelsius Dashboards

5 398 Business Intelligence Journal July Solution Diagram Figure.6 Solution flow Business Intelligence Journal - July, 2011 Vol.4 No.2

6 2011 Rakesh Tej Kumar Kalahasthi, Benson Hilbert 399 Key Performance Indicators Figure.7 KPI list Infoproviders Safety Multiprovider for EXECDASH EHS Audit Safety Pyramid Proactive Safety SMS Action Plan Finance Multiprovider for EXECDASH BPC EXECDASH DSO EXECDASH MASTER DSO Business_ EXECDASH Masterdata OperationMultiprovider for EXECDASH Comshare EXECDASH DSO Comshare EXECDASH DSO YTD FX Rate DSO Finance Data DSO Plant Business direct update Plant Business direct update (Attribute) Plant Business direct update (Texts) Universes are build on these BEx queries and pulled into XCELSIUS through LIVE OFFICE. Xcelsius Text Box Combo Box List Box Tab Set Combination Chart Bar Chart Etc Figure.8 Dashboard Bex Queries Comprises of queries based on business areas Safety Operation Finance Separate queries are built based on [4] Business areas for dashboard development. Kumar K. R., Hilbert B. - A Short Communication on - How a Leading Power Distribution Company Effectively Tracks Business Areas Like Safety, Finance and Operation for Region and Business wise for evaluating their KPI s - Using BusinessObjects Xcelsius Dashboards

7 400 Business Intelligence Journal July Final Output and Demo Figure.9 Final output 1a. Figure.9 Final output 1c. Figure.9 Final output 1b. Figure.9 Final output 1d. Security Entry point to the EXECDASH dashboard is via a link on portal. This link will launch the [5] SAP EP portal that will have the Dashboard as well as the commentary capture capability. The User is automatically authenticates using the ourcompany.com credentials and will not need to reauthenticate for EXECDASH. For release 1, since total integrated security is not in scope, the access to BW and the comments database will be through a single user ID. The currently requirements allows for all users to see all data. However, the commentary function data while visible to all users is only editable by the respective level, function and Hierarchy (plant, business, sub-region, and region) users. For all other users that fall outside this context, the commentary function appears in read-only mode. Business Intelligence Journal - July, 2011 Vol.4 No.2

8 2011 Rakesh Tej Kumar Kalahasthi, Benson Hilbert 401 Best Practices Have a Legend tab to maintain above details and more Designing Xcelsius Visualizations [6] Use Colors, Labels, and Borders to Identify Data Types (Input and Out Put) Organize the Data in a Logical Fashion Place Frequently Used Data and Logic at the Top of the Sheet Use Multiple Tabs Dashboard Design Design on paper Start with and Empty Spreadsheet Try to Keep the Data and Logic to minimum Add Components Add some dummy data to check the Chart and interactivity Add Dynamic visibility Logic Remove the Dummy Data Export and Test the [7] Visualization Preparing the Xcelsius Workbook Use Multiple Tabs Group logical data sets together Master Data Query output in one tab Use Colors & Column & Row Labels to identify datasets Figure.11 Color coding Conclusion This work delivers a very high level decision making dashboards which are used to evaluate KPI's of different business areas. Xcelsius dash boarding provided most effective way of analysing business across different regions which provided relevant, accurate and transparent reporting for use by regional management and executives to enable decision making each month. The loading of comments by the users and retrieving them from the data warehouse played a huge role by the effective coordination build between Xcelsius, Enterprise Portal and SAP BI system. References objects/large/business-intelligence/dashboardvisualization/xcelsius-enterprise/ featuresfunctions /index.epx R. Kimball (1996), The Data Warehouse Toolkit, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York (1996). Ingo Hilgefort (2008), "Xcelsius 2008 with SAP NetWeaver BI" The Need for Speed: Faster BI Means Better Business Decisions New business intelligence tools enable users to leverage data in more productive ways- An exclusive report from Business Week Research Services. SAP Enterprise Portal Security Guide, " sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/ uuid/59bba b-cd12efda573a?q uicklink=index&overridelayout=true" articlereprints.html Tom Turchioe with contributions by Jay Thoden Van Velzen and Ingo Hilgefort (2010), Performance & Scalability Best Practices and Tuning Recommendations for SAPBO XI 3.1 on BW" Kumar K. R., Hilbert B. - A Short Communication on - How a Leading Power Distribution Company Effectively Tracks Business Areas Like Safety, Finance and Operation for Region and Business wise for evaluating their KPI s - Using BusinessObjects Xcelsius Dashboards