Ashley Kasper

Objective

Banks need analytics tools too. We can’t manage what we can’t measure.

The request

• Build an analytics dashboard and define a set of metrics to measure the performance of business units.

Tool

• Microsoft’s Excel PowerPivot

Scope

Build a tabular reporting model, connected to the database, and build a report on top of the tabular model using Excel Services PowerPivot.

Strategy

• Identify what they are trying to measure. Find where those datapoint live and build an ETL reporting process to generate the results on a schedule.
• Develop user stories based on end user report requests
• Use user stories as test scripts to ensure all needs are met
• Utilize business side operations analysts for additional testing by comparing the UAT report to live data (Inventory Management System)
• Reference look up / dimension tables in databases for business friendly language and only use those fields for reporting – ie: no codes or IDs.

Business Benefit

Currently, no other self service analytic tools, such as Business Objects, exist for the inventory system. This limits the insight business manager’s have into their data. Prior to reporting, data could only be acquired through ad-hoc requests, sent via SURF tickets, to the data analytics and reporting (CMOAR) team, which could take days to weeks (average = 30 days) to complete due to prioritization and competing backlog requests.

Click the link below to view a deck describing the benefits of self service reporting, including metrics on my September 2016 release:

LPO Self Service Business Intelligence

Implementation Metrics

13 days after implementation:

• Insight Center (reporting hub) shows the report was accessed 156 times (or approx. 12 times per day)
•  Report was accessed by 20 (out of 22 – or 91%) different CDCR users – including work directors, managers, and ops analysts.
•  Most users (91%) have accessed the report more than 1x, with the average being 6.6 (max = 57, min = 1, median = 4.5).

Reasons to build SSBI (Self Service Business Intelligence)

1.  Less ad hoc reporting
2.  Better, more defined requirements
3.  Multi purpose multi use
4.  Reach greater audience, meet more user’s needs
5.  Business doesn’t need to wait for ‘tech support’
6.  BI developers don’t waste time building reports the business only later finds out they don’t need, or that they provided the incorrect requirements
7.  Tabular model is more scalable
8.  Answers questions you didn’t know the business had

User Feedback

“I’m able to get to a lot of info that helps us coach/drive success” – Assistant Manager

“Has helped from a POC review perspective find and identify loans numbers fitting the criteria that I need. So recently, I needed to search for all loan numbers that had been completed over a couple month period, and compare that against a report Trust Accounting provided us. Couldn’t have found the status of the tasks without the self service tool” – Assistant Manager

“I use it multiple times a day. The interface is easier to use than Business Objects because it has less fields, and takes less time to run queries and load results,” – Operations Analyst

Ensuring SSBI tools are a success

• Continuously remind the business that the self service tool is for research and analysis only.
• If they find themselves pulling something daily, tell them to ask the report to be automated, and have them provide you with the requirements / criteria they were using in the daily pull.
• Share with Ops Analysts how a self service report can replace their other tools with this one.
• Build the model in a separate workbook so that all future reports can be built off the same model.
• Set the model to refresh multiple times a day (30 min or 1 hour increments) so that the business has real time data.
• Self Service reporting meets a very different need than dashboard reporting. The business uses both frequently and one shouldn’t replace the other. Using both gives the business insights into their KPIs (dashboard) and day to day inventory flow (self service).