Enterprise Performance Management

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COMPANY

Our client is a subsidiary of an international corporation with annual revenues in excess of $20 billion.

The subsidiary is the U.S. based solutions services business with over 14,000 employees at 70 locations throughout the United States. Our client provides the full-spectrum of support and services solutions for defense, intelligence and civilian agencies within the U.S. Government.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Our client wanted to implement enterprise performance management applications to address their current and future performance excellence needs with a focus on becoming a high-performing organization that proactively manages its business in a near real-time capacity. Their existing processes were cumbersome and inefficient and characterized by the following:

Multiple data sources:

  • PeopleSoft HR/Payroll
  • Microsoft Customer Relationship Management
  • Deltek ERP
  • Microsoft SharePoint forms and data stores
  • Executive management was focused on status reporting rather than exception reporting, planning, and decision-making
  • Data calls to support internal processes were time consuming and manually intensive
  • By the time information reached upper management, data was out-of-date making proactive management difficult

A robust, extensible, and scalable solution was needed to meet the requirements of a project centric environment and allow the integration of additional internal and external data sources.

SOLUTION

Our client chose Ascendra as an integration partner for its Enterprise Performance Management solution.

Ascendra leveraged the Business Objects EPM & Business Intelligence (BI) tools suite to deliver this solution. This solution met requirements by:

  • Accommodating access to data stored in proprietary data sources.
  • Providing browser-based access through an interface that was intuitive to a business user. The users are not required to have technical knowledge of databases and SQL scripts or familiarity with the internal database structure of the company’s data sources.
  • Fitting well into the existing technical environment.
  • Creating an interface that provides canned querying capability to data stored in a data mart and other data sources.
  • Providing an intuitive dashboard focused on several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) critical to our client’s business goals.
  • Providing a scalable platform that could be leveraged in the future to integrate additional internal and external data sources.

BENEFITS

By implementing the Enterprise Performance Management solution, the client has observed remarkable business improvements. This solution minimized the time-consuming and costly manual processes required to retrieve, organize and report raw data. In addition, the quality, timeliness and relevance of the project information has contributed to more efficient and proactive project management.

Estimated Margin Improvement—$4.5M

  • Margin improvement from a reduction in unbilled balances at-risk
  • Margin from improved staffing on labor based contracts

Estimated Labor Savings—Approximately 10,000 hours annually or $0.5M

  • Reduction in support staff time through the automation of various manual reporting requirements.
  • Reduction in operations staff time through a more consistent process of project review
  • Elimination of costs related to manual report creation and maintenance

Potential Intangible Benefits

  • Improved effectiveness and efficiency of management
  • Increased employee satisfaction

SERVICES & TECHNOLOGIES UTILIZED

Ascendra provided the following consulting services for the Enterprise Performance Management -

Balanced Scorecard Automation solution:

  • Project Management
  • Architecture Design and deployment
  • Data Mart Design and Development
  • ETL and Universe Design & Development
  • Dashboard Design & Development
  • Reports Design and Development

Software:

  • Business Objects Web Intelligence XI R2 Windows
  • Business Objects Dashboard Manager XI R2 Windows
  • Business Objects Performance Manager XI R2 Windows
  • Crystal Reports Developer XI Windows
  • Business Objects Xcelsius
  • Data Integrator
  • Windows 2003, XP
  • Linux
  • Microsoft SQL-Server 2005
  • Oracle Application Server
  • Internet Explorer