Case Study 1- Properties Das Ist Gut 4U (BI Implementation) Introduction

Properties Das Ist Gut 4U (PDIG4U) is Germanys largest diversified property group. PDIG4U develop, own and manage retail centers, business parks, logistics centers, and office buildings within large metropolitan and regional centers.

Company profile PDIG4U was founded in 1992 with a vision to "not merely achieve growth and profits but to make a worthwhile contribution to the development of our cities and great country." PDIG4U has a long and proud history of creating places that meet the needs of their customers and communities. Currently employing over 900 people and with over 40 locations, PDIG4U continues to expand.

Over the years of expansion PDIG4U has managed their own financial data and reporting systems. These systems have proliferated across the group as each department built reporting solutions to cater to their own needs. Company reporting is now done using a mix of outdated technology platforms (JD Edwards and an inventory and reporting system), with bolt on reporting aggregators built in MS Access data bases and MS Excel spreadsheets containing complex macros.

A recent project implemented a new CRM system to manage leasing and sales that provides a modern interface operating via the corporate intranet. This CRM system interfaces with existing finance and reporting systems to pull data as the old systems remain the source of truth, and it also contains a whole new set of data fields developed to improve management of the retail and office centers. These new data sets are only held in the CRM system and are not passed to the old systems. The data logic maps and data dictionary are out of date and this is causing issues across the group.

Problem statement PDIG4U has a large team in the finance department managing multiple systems, databases and using complex excel spreadsheets to produce the multiple levels of financial reporting across the group. Reporting often takes weeks, is easily prone to error, and the spreadsheets are becoming unstable and unwieldy. In addition, reporting formats and ability to access data (drill down or aggregate) is no longer meeting the needs of the various stakeholders who rely on this information to make business decisions on a daily basis and to compile reports for external stakeholders.

Stakeholders

Senior Executive Management (CIO, CFO, CEO and other executives in senior management roles across the group): Currently receive detailed and aggregate reporting in MS Powerpoint files every month. The problem is that information is too old to be actionable and only provides a snapshot of past results. This group would like aggregated real time data at call in a dashboard format they can access from their desktop or from an iPad or other mobile device. Critical Data should be presented in easy to use graphs with the ability for individual executives to drill down into the data to gain more a detailed view and to have a standard set of filters so they can sort, organize and extract data themselves. Currently, they are very frustrated with both timeliness and presentation of the data.

Divisional VPs (manage group divisions such as office, retail, industrial, property development and sales). Currently get weekly divisional reports from finance, more detail oriented than executive and will pore over spreadsheets to check information. Again this data is old and error prone. They are constantly requesting updates and ad-hoc reports from the finance team. This data is focused on individual divisions rather than a whole group view. They expect the same look and feel to data as the Executive Management Team, i.e., in a dashboard and graphical format, with the additional requirement that they want data to be pre-filtered to only show their division. They are very excited about this project and are giving it their full attention.

Finance and reporting team (reporting to the CFO): Team of over 30 staff responsible for producing all financial reports for anyone in PDIG4U. They have highly developed skills in access and excel and are extensive users of pre-existing systems though are only starting to integrate the new data in the CRM platform into their excel reports (not using CRM reporting capabilities yet). They import all data into excel spreadsheets for manipulation, reporting and investigation. This team currently manages over 30 standard reports, some of the reports have over 10,000 lines of data. They are incredibly knowledgeable about the financial data and its meaning but they find it challenging to provide meaningful data to PDIG4U and they realize that they have become a bottle neck for the company. They are somewhat apprehensive about this project as they are used to being the go to people for information. Consequently, they are change resistant and fear for their jobs.

IT team (reporting to CIO): They manage existing systems including: all applications, systems access, security, and helpdesk services. They know the current systems are nearing end of life but take pride in maintaining them for organizational use. They realize that they are often seen as scapegoats and are a frustration to the business who want a more modern reporting platform. Whilst not sponsoring this project, the CIO is partnering with the CFO to ensure best of breed design and usability of the new platform is an outcome of the project.

Center mangers (reporting to the divisional executives): They are in charge of the day to day management of each retail, office or industrial center. Their role is to manage the local cleaning and maintenance contracts and center staff. They need real time access to financial data on their own center and are also interested in finances of similar centers across the nation for comparative evaluation. Very detail oriented and extensively use the current excel reporting, though are very frustrated with always having to go through the finance team. They cannot wait to be able to access, sort and print out their own data

Retail leasing portfolio managers (reporting to the Sales Executive with dotted line to the Center Manager(s)): They manage a portfolio of retail and office spaces across a geographic region. Their role is to maximize the leasing and profitability of the spaces within their portfolio. Needs are similar to the divisional executives, they are very supportive of the project and will be the change champions and day to day decision makers and road block removers.

Project Overview The project goal is to: Design and Build a world class financial reporting on a business intelligence platform, this platform will interface seamlessly with underlying corporate systems CRM and JD Edwards and MS office suite.

High Level Requirements

Data will be held in common enterprise information layer in the BI server with over night files sent from existing JDE and real time interface with CRM. Old reporting and inventory system will be retired at the same time.

The new platform will be accessible via the intranet and from supported mobile devices and remote workstations. It will be a single source of truth for whole company and which will cater to all the reporting needs of various stakeholders.

In some cases stakeholders will request new base data fields not available in CRM or JDE, a strategic decision has been made to build these in JDE or CRM. Aggregation, calculation and presentation will be performed from the base data by BI system (OLAP server)

There will be suite of standard reports built for all stakeholder groups, from executive dashboards to detailed financial data reports. The Finance team will be trained in BI analytics with ability to create new reports or change existing suite.

A high level business case has been approved to fund the next phase which is to

Define the report requirements and high level design of the reports,

identification of all new data requirements and data sources

identification of all system interfaces

process map the new finance reporting processes capturing roles andresponsibilities of all parties

build a data dictionary and validate all current report calculations (from excel spreadsheets)

work with IT to validate a data hierarchy model

define access and security requirements

work out a budget and time frame to do detail design, build, test and implement

Potential Business Analysis Scope

To help you start to think about this project - as the senior BA allocated to this project, your role may include:

plan and manage all the business analysis tasks, activities and deliverables (assume a small team of BA and SMEs under your guidance)

report to the project manager

work out the best approach to requirement gathering, documenting and report design (which methodology, which techniques, how to explain this and get support)

plan and manage iterative workshops to gather data requirements, usability requirements, and reporting look and feel design requirements build data dictionary and validate with SME and finance managers design report formats focusing on usability, navigation and presentation of data work with technical team (developers and BI solution architects0 to ensure business needs are able to be met technically manage scope creep and additional requirements, impact analysis, costings and present to stakeholders for approval / rejection report to senior stakeholders on progress manage analysis risks and issues.

Identify solution options

Develop recommendation process map the To- be finance reporting processes with business manage report reviews and sign offs Assist PM with set up of central project sharepoint site for document management

Please answer the questions outline below.

Module 7 Requirements Analysis and Design Definition:

1. What models will you use to Specify and Model Requirements?