P3 Builds Business Intelligence Tool for Enhanced Reporting, Transparency

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1 P3 Builds Business Intelligence Tool for Enhanced Reporting, Transparency By David M. Dukes

2 This initiative received the GFOA s Louisville Award and an Award for Excellence for Provide not just data, but a way to understand and make use of that information. Williamson County, Texas, has grown quickly, and the accompanying transition from rural to urban required county leaders to change the way they viewed information, reported critical operational data, and approached transparency. The expanding population demanded information and technical advances; the Old Guard resisted change; and one faction had the idea that if people don t know how much money they have, then they won t spend it. Like governments at all levels, Williamson County had been collecting vast amounts of data, but it couldn t really be called information or intelligence. Simple operational reporting on the data in the county s ERP system was a manual, labor-intensive task, as were reconciliation activities related to that data. Management had limited high-level insight into simple analytics like countywide and department overtime costs and current budget-toactual experience positions. Department heads and managers needed tools to help them access information that would help them make better, faster decisions. The county also wants to provide accurate and timely information to improve transparency and for the positive effect additional information can have for instance, higher credit ratings, which reduce bond issuance costs, as counterparties have more confidence in transparent organizations. To achieve these goals, the Williamson County Auditor s Office decided it would need to create its own solution; historically, counties have lacked the internal reporting capabilities necessary to address these issues well. Therefore, Williamson County developed four goals for meeting its needs and requirements: 1. Use technology to provide information. 2. Improve countywide communication, both internally and externally. 3. Improve the timeliness of reporting (in some cases, reporting was done once a month, after close). DEVELOPING THE SOLUTION Like governments at all levels, Williamson County had been collecting vast amounts of data, but it couldn t really be called information or intelligence. To create a better option for meeting its business intelligence goals, Williamson County collaborated with thirdparty vendor Mo mix Solutions to develop and implement Performance Center, a cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) business intelligence and operational reporting system that makes use of cloud-based technologies. The system is integrated with the county s ERP system and can be extended to any source of data. This project is not so much a completely new technology project as an example of using a P3 to optimize a number of proven technology approaches. Both partners shared development costs, and the county and vendor co-developed the software. In a way, it is a typical data warehouse implementation project that provides operational reporting and business intelligence. Williamson County s P3 team took the creative approaches to addressing the challenges that arose. For example, many projects quickly become overly complex, attempting to deliver all things to all people and solving every possible reporting problem that might ever be encountered. An evergrowing list of features to be implemented can cause any project to fail, but this challenge is most often seen in business intelligence and reporting projects. The P3 team maintained a focus on delivering a defined set of reporting capabilities that were designed to meet needs county departments defined as most important, thus maintaining a well-defined scope. Some public-sector organizations address their reporting needs by using custom software. The P3 s approach is to create a solution that can be used easily by other public-sector entities. Tools that are developed for the private sector and then customized for public-sector use are not as efficient, especially during upgrades. The overhead cost of the ongoing maintenance and the future enhancements to the product are shared by all customers who purchase the Performance Center software. October 2014 Government Finance Review 21

3 Reporting software is often generic, built to meet the requirements of most of a vendor s client base. As a result, public-sector organizations often have to buy software that was designed for commercial users and adapt it. Performance Center was designed from the start to address the unique challenges and requirements of public-sector organizations, which include fund accounting, budgetto-actual accounting and reporting, encumbrance accounting, grant management, and comprehensive annual financial reports. The P3 s goal was to design a product that is easily transferrable to other entities by using identical data tables that can be populated from any data source. In the past, before such a project could even get started, a capital expenditure would be required to procure additional hardware and significant IT staff resources to not only configure the hardware but to install whatever software and application development tools were needed to support the project. That would be followed by ongoing IT staff support and hardware maintenance costs for the lifetime of the project. Making Performance Center cloud-based eliminated these upfront costs. An additional advantage is that a cloud architecture The county has realized soft cost savings as a result of automating its reporting, including 75 percent less time for staff to run and distribute reports. can be expanded quickly and easily to support additional demand and new applications. Large-scale business intelligence projects tend to be very expensive and have high up-front costs. This is not only due to the on-site implementation model but also to the high cost of typical software procurement and licensing contracts. Performance Center is licensed via a SaaS model, and ongoing costs are included in a single annual subscription fee, spreading the total project costs over time to fit more easily into the typical public- sector funding cycle. WHAT PERFFORMANCE CENTER DOES Williamson County started its ongoing effort to meet its data transparency goals in 1998 with a project called the Financial Center, which standardized reporting and made accounting information available immediately to departmental users. The auditor s vision was to provide county departments with easy-access, self-service reporting software that would improve operational efficiencies in a cost-effective way. Financial Center served the county s internal reporting needs well for many years, but the time came to improve and keep up with demands and technological advancements. This was not easy to do. Business intelligence and reporting software has largely ignored the unique financial and operational reporting demands of public-sector organizations. Also, to be completely transparent, governments must be able to report clearly and concisely to the taxpayers, which isn t a concern for private-sector entities. The county s off-the-shelf ERP system did not adequately address reporting requirements related to encumbrance accounting, grant management, and payroll, making routine public-sector business practices such as encumbrance reconciliation, month-end close and grant compliance reporting manual, time-consuming processes. Many business operations reporting systems take the most obvious approach: building reports that run directly against the source data systems, usually through a vendor-supplied reporting tool that runs on the same hardware as the source system, often using a system of pre-defined views to mask the 22 Government Finance Review October 2014

4 underlying data complexity with a simplified layer. While this approach can usually be implemented quickly, it is extremely limited in that users can view only data that are completely contained in the main underlying source application. There is no potential for incorporating other data sets, and it is difficult to go beyond the predefined views of the underlying data. REAPING THE ADVANTAGES Performance Center takes a true, external data warehouse approach and can therefore be easily expanded to include any data source from any application. The software extracts, aggregates, and transforms data in meaningful ways. It provides more than 650 combinations of standard reports, executive dashboards, and ad hoc reporting capabilities. The software improves reporting capabilities at four levels operational, staff, management, and taxpayer while reducing the costs of reporting and manpower. It includes both ETL (extract, transform, and load) and reports that are geared specifically to the public sector, ending the need for purchasing a business intelligence tool then building the supporting ETL, data warehouse, and, ultimately, reports, dashboards, and analytics. Performance Center wraps all these steps in one simple package a government only has to deal with once, saving time and money. The application is also easy to use, with a simple drag-and-drop user interface, and users can access to the application using a familiar web browser interface. Performance Center was based on the existing Financial Center software and built on the county s vision for improved reporting and incorporating technological advances. The new software was implemented in late Performance Center was implemented in phases over six months, in parallel with an ERP upgrade. The vendor s consultants performed the bulk of the implementation, working with county subject matter experts over a three-week period to identify reporting requirements. Performance Center is pre-built for government reporting and analytics, and it is ready to integrate with the ERP database tables easily, allowing for rapid installation and extraction of data. The county has realized soft cost savings as a result of automating its reporting, including 75 percent less Performance Center takes a true, external data warehouse approach and can therefore be easily expanded to include any data source from any application. time for staff to run and distribute reports. The IT department no longer has to create one-off custom reports for the ERP system or manage the business intelligence application, as it is fully supported through the SaaS subscription. Interoffice paper reporting distribution has also been eliminated for financial reports since all users now have access to reporting on demand. And departments have gained efficiencies from being able to easily access information such as expenses by vendor and NIGP code, costs of maintaining facilities and roads, and other data that were previously too time-consuming to analyze. The county can use its analytics to manage financial data and performance measures for grants and projects, report grant compliance more easily, and reduce fraud and waste. ERP data are replicated in Performance Center every 30 minutes, so county officials are able to drill down into the details without having to log into the ERP system. WHAT S NEXT As users developed reporting skills and as enhancements were implemented, Performance Center continues to improve the county s business intelligence capabilities and internal transparency. Through their longterm partnership, both partners in the P3 will continue to enhance and improve the existing business intel- October 2014 Government Finance Review 23

5 Government Finance Review Editorial Calendar February 2015 Recruiting and Retaining High- Quality Finance Staff Articles due: November 3, 2014 December 15, 2014 April 2015 Building a Financially Resilient Government Articles due: January 2, 2015 February 16, 2015 June 2015 Concepts in Accounting Articles due: Feb. 2, 2015 March 16, 2015 August 2015 Capital Finance and Debt Articles due: May 1, 2015 June 15, 2015 October 2015 Improving the Budgeting Process Articles due: July 1, 2015 August 17, 2015 December 2015 Investing, Revenue, and Cash Management Articles due: September 1, 2015 October 15, 2015 February 2016 Analytics: The Power of Data and Information Articles due: November 2, 2015 December 15, 2015 April 2016 Strategic Risk Management Articles due: January 4, 2016 February 15, 2016 June 2016 Financing Employee Benefits: The Big Picture Articles due: March 1, 2016 April 15, 2016 August 2016 Public Budgeting Articles due: May 2, 2016 June 15, 2016 October 2016 Citizen Involvement in Finance Articles due: July 1, 2016 August 15, 2016 December 2016 Leadership in Government Finance Articles due: September 2, 2016 October 17, 2016 Topics Subject to Change For editorial information, contact Managing Editor, , gfr@gfoa.org For advertising information, contact Advertising Manager, 203 N. LaSalle Street, Ste. 2700, Chicago, IL phone: fax: The P3 team maintained a focus on delivering a defined set of reporting capabilities that were designed to meet needs county departments defined as most important, thus maintaining a well-defined scope. ligence and transparency products by including Kronos time-keeping information, for instance, and by adding additional information that is not currently part of the county s ERP system, such as information on law enforcement activities (e.g., the number of traffic tickets). Having achieved this degree of success in meeting its goals, the county was now prepared to concentrate on taxpayer and stakeholder needs, rather than just complying with governmental guidelines. Williamson County and its vendor therefore continued their successful collaboration by creating a transparency site geared for external stakeholders called MyGovCenter in March (The site is at wilco.mygovcenter.com/.) Williamson County wants to do more than the minimum, going the next step to help taxpayers and citizens find the information they needed more easily. MyGovCenter, which went live in March 2014, is the first step in that endeavor. MyGovCenter reports spend data out of the Performance Center tables. It also includes non-financial information such as descriptions of debt projects, notes about elected officials, tax rates, and public information requests. The county plans to enhance this product to include complete budget-to-actual reporting from the budget request to the close of the books (including encumbrance accounting). The concepts of P3s, SaaS, and cloud technology are making it possible for Williamson County to meet all the demands brought about by the tremendous growth it has experienced. y DAVID M. DUKES is assistant financial director, Office of the County Auditor, for Williamson County, Texas. 24 Government Finance Review October 2014