Garber SC Intelligence - TaxAdmin.org€¦ · 9/5/11 1 Terry%Garber%...
Transcript of Garber SC Intelligence - TaxAdmin.org€¦ · 9/5/11 1 Terry%Garber%...
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Terry Garber
South Carolina Department of Revenue
FTA Technology Conference 2011
The day before a Governor’s Cabinet meeting….
SCDOR – Sometime in 2008
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Compiling Data to Prepare Our Agency Director
The day before a Governor’s Cabinet meeting…
Now at SCDOR
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• Selected SAP Business Objects suite • Brought in several BI vendors for Proof of Concept • Business Objects allowed SCDOR business users to be
productive more quickly and easily • State was implementing SAP for statewide accounting
• Brought in contracted Project Manager • Experience in reporting, data cleansing, and data mining
• Good “people person” for working with business users
• Built technical team • Data analyst from Data Warehouse team • Contracted systems administrator and developer
Getting Started
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• Goal to provide something useful for every division
• Replicated Reports • Based on existing reports from legacy or new system • Grabbed pre-‐print report files • Re-‐created reports in Business Objects
• Low Risk • Avoided need for database navigation • Easy to know when it was correct
• High Benefits • Users could sort, group, and filter • Combined summary and detail reports for drill-‐down
Rapid Deployment Strategy
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• Easy to create graphs from existing reports
• Replaced manual/Excel efforts
• At–a-‐glance performance monitoring for agency management
• Shared with the rank and file by each agency division • Loaded onto division Sharepoint pages • Default pages for morning log on
• Key measures displayed on agency intranet
Dashboards
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• Business users liked the tools • Ability to merge data from multiple systems
• Ability to automate manual reporting, especially compilations from multiple reports
• Operational reporting stays with Applications Services • Needed to complete an operational process • Often time critical
• Management reporting moves to Business Objects • Backlog of reports from new tax system • New requests, often from outside the agency
Results: Highly Successful
• Need for native data navigation and extract
• More difficult to test – how to tell when it’s right
• Need for Business Analyst with tax system knowledge
• Evolution from Project to Working Unit • Standards • Quality Assurance • Full system development life cycle • Documentation standards
• Backlog and priority management
• Added second data analyst and second developer
New Challenges
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• Technology management in IT • Server and storage administration • Product releases and patches • Security administration • Performance monitoring and tuning • Data administration
• Report creation shared • High complexity/accuracy/performance reporting in IT • What-‐if/how-‐many/show-‐me querying by users • In many cases, a well-‐structured universe and a few well-‐designed templates can allow business users to replace an inventory of developed reports
Roles: IT vs Business Users
• Tier One or “golden” data • From legacy or new processing systems • More likely to be accurate to start with
• Tier Two or Data Warehouse data • Intended for statistical or trending usage • May not include anomalies or exception data • May include data from external sources
• Tier Three or user-‐maintained data • Multiple formats: MS Excel, MS Access, .csv
• Garbage in, garbage out!
It’s All About the Data
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• Need to build inventory of denormalized tables • Selection of data elements that may be used for reporting • How to flatten data without losing key relationships
• Creating and scheduling extract packages
• Designing universes as needed • Logical views • Data objects that can be reused
• Combining data from multiple sources • Making sure that combined on a common dimension
• Apples and oranges
• Determining aggregation – table, universe, or report
Data Management
• Automate not just manual reports, but also manual business processes
• Example: Debtor’s Corner • Starts with extract from legacy Collections system
• Splits by district office, converts to MS Excel, and emails spreadsheets to the districts – all automatically
• District managers review for taxpayers that should be removed from the lists, and email them to main office
• Main office coordinator does final pass and saves data
• Business Objects imports and combines spreadsheets, creates final list, and formats for web posting
New Composite Applications
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• Business Intelligence doesn’t just happen automatically when you install a BI product suite
• You need an introductory strategy, strong sponsorship, and technically competent core team
• As BI evolves, data management becomes the key challenge – it can make or break the effort
• Enable the business users wherever possible – but be prepared for complex development by core team
• Encourage creativity! Some of the best BI apps start with a “here’s what I would like” sketch
Summary
Questions??