BI Study Case

Giving answers to the right questions in the University of Zaragoza

6th March 2014

CEO: You guys have a lot of data, don’t you? CIO: (er…) Well, basically yes

Can we make better use of them? What for?

You know, taking better decisions, being more efficient, transparency, accountability, and all that stuff

We can try... When do you say we need it? What like in a few months this bundle, and in a couple of years the whole lot?

(ahem) And which additional resources do we have? What for? Don’t we have the data already? It is just using them, isn’t it?

A  funny  story  (any  resemblance  to  reality  

is  purely  coincidental)  

The Questions General Frame

The Answers The BI Process

•  University of Zaragoza •  Spanish Scenario •  Governance Challenges •  Is BI a Solution? •  Goals

•  Premises •  BI Approach •  Organization •  Bottom-Up BI Vision •  BI Architecture •  BI Project •  Results •  Benefits

•  Established 1542 •  Within Spanish Top 10 in all rankings •  >50 EHEA grade courses + master/doc + along-life

•  Engineerings & Architecture •  Sciences •  Biomed’s •  Social •  Arts & humanities

•  ~ 40k students & 4k academic staff •  ~ 700 in / 900 out Erasmus students/year •  >200 structured research teams

University of Zaragoza The Questions The Answers

Official  KPIs            

Facul&es  

Analisys  &  Forecas&ng  

Office  Ac&vity  

Quality  

Data  

Info  Knowledge  

Autonomous Communities (Regions) Administration

Spanish General State Administration

Assessment  

Funds  

Governance  

Decreasing students & grants Increasing Fees

Increasing Competitiveness

Sta<s<cs  

Decreasing Budget Increasing Quality levels required

Improving control tools

Repor<ng  

The Questions The Answers Spanish Scenario

Official Organisms University

Governance challenges

• Increasing number of inquirers (inside & outside the university)

• Different criteria when demanding information

• Data analys is f rom dif ferent information systems

• Generation of official statistics

• Transparency / Accountability

Governance Challenges

University Governance Different players in the University are requesting information to facilitate their decision-making process:

•  Rector •  Vice Rectors •  Heads of Faculties •  Etc.

The Questions The Answers

But there are some difficulties: •  Quality of the data •  Lack of transparency of data owners •  Poor data integration across systems •  Global view of data, complex and interconnected They must be faced, otherwise: •  Too complicated and not always satisfying BI solutions •  Finally needing extra specific queries, reports, Excel files …

Is BI a Solution? The Questions The Answers

BI tools are good to: •  Help the management boards

take the right decisions •  Meet the demands for

accountability •  Support the strategy of

transparency and PSI reuse  

UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE

Increasing Quality levels required

& Improving control tools

Goals

Support Decision-Makers

Reduce Costs Increase Quality of Teaching

Retain Students

Improve Reputation

Recruit Students

BI System

Decreasing Budget

Increasing Fees

More Competitive

Decreasing students

and grants

The Questions The Answers

Requires

Requires

Avoids

Avoids

Avoids

Optimize Organization

The Questions General Frame

The Answers The BI Process

•  University of Zaragoza •  Spanish Scenario •  Governance Challenges •  Is BI a Solution? •  Goals

•  Premises •  BI Approach •  Organization •  Bottom-Up BI Vision •  BI Architecture •  BI Project •  Results •  Benefits

Full functionality? à cover all main areas of the University:

•  Academic (students) •  Human Resources •  R+D+i •  Financial •  Teaching

Transparency + Collaboration? à give extensive access to the system Time reduction, Autonomy & Control? à Agile development & acquiring expertise Cost reduction? à Open Source

Premises The Questions The Answers

BI Approach

Proposal

Collaborative Process

Closed solution

Home made solution

University Staff

Specialized partner

Benefits

Time reduction Autonomy

Control

The Questions The Answers

Collaborative solution

High-level institutional

compromise

BI Process Methodology

Tools

BI Expertise

Academic, Teaching, HR

Financial, R+D+i

Domain Expertise

Organization

Organic Unit Users & Technicians

Project leader

IT developpers

Rector Vice-rectors

CIO

Board

IT Director

Quality&Rationalization Office

Tech Support

Organic Unit Managers Tech Support

The Questions The Answers

IT Skills

Analysis Skills

Business Skills

x  N  

Go

vern

an

ce

The Questions The Answers Bottom-up BI Vision

MATURITY

Plan Control

KPIs

Official Statistics

Operational Data Store

Transactional DB

Normalization and aggregation of data

Day to Day reporting with Data Quality guaranteed in the bottom layer

Accurate analytics for Official Institutions Create Datamarts for specific areas reporting

Added value reporting & services from an ODS avoiding access to Transactional DB

Historical and trending information

Analytics for decision making Implement Official KPIs checking

Progressive question-driven process, applying data quality in origin, to provide right answers to increasingly complex inquiries

   ORIGIN OF DATA

Staging Area

DWH

SIGMA Open Analytics

ETL ETL ETL Schema

Q  q      q  

Pentaho Data Integration

Schema Workbench

SIS  CRIS  

UNIV.  

ETL

Datamarts

SIGMA

Official Statistics

The system architecture includes a general DWH which serves the different datamarts for OLAP analysis

and also allows report generation

BI Architecture The Questions The Answers

Development

R+D+i

BI Project

Global

Analysis

Develop.

Academic (students)

HR

Analysis

R+D+i

•  Admission •  Registration •  Performance •  Graduated •  Cohorts

Academic (students)

•  Researchers •  Staff •  Work place •  Position

HR

•  Groups & Institutes •  Projects & contracts •  Intellectual property •  Scientific production •  Entrepeneurship •  Mobility of researchers

R+D+i

2013 2014 Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1 Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1

To be defined

The Questions The Answers

The Questions The Answers Results Universidad de Zaragoza – Open Analytical Solution

Results The Questions The Answers

~2.5/5 areas covered (academic – HR – R+D+i) > 100 KPIs 3 Dashboards with KPIs

> 6k users with access to the system:

4 admin >10 advanced >200 area-specialized >6k general (potential)

 

Benefits

•  Institutional alignment in all the process

•  Close collaboration between different areas of the University

•  Consolidated BI Competency Center (BICC)

•  Information transparency

•  Collateral improvement of data quality and integration

The Questions The Answers

www.unizar.es