UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
BI/09/05
BI PROJECT BOARD, 05 August 2009
S Sherwood
Project Manager (BISS), Academic Services
Business Intelligence Project – the next steps
1
INTRODUCTION
Due to a change in strategic direction for the University, the Business Intelligence project has been refocused
from KPI’s to include Business Planning. Although the project is still in progress, the procurement work
stream has been stopped pending a review of available options and an agreement on the required approach.
The Data quality work continues, in addition to a range of other smaller work streams, looking at BI in key
areas, such as Admissions and NSS data.
The BI Project team have been asked to prepare this document to summarise the next steps of the project,
the available procurement options for the University, and some key action points.
2
CURRENT SITUATION
2.1
Project Scope
The scope of the project, although mostly unchanged from the original PID, has had a shift in emphasis
towards Business Planning and the necessary supporting data. The KPI reports and balanced scorecard will
also need to be delivered alongside the planning requirements. There is a substantial increase in scope in
terms of requirements gathering now that the full business planning process is to fall with the project remit
and this does need to be evaluated in terms of resourcing and finances.
2.2
BI Team resources
The current BI project team consist of 4 core team members:



Project Manager (currently 50% fte)
2 x BI Developers (currently 80% fte each)
Data Analyst (currently 50% fte)
The BI developers are working on a range of mini-projects and other University work, including Xrep exam
reporting, Admissions data warehouse, Monarch, HR system reporting and various other operational
reporting requirements.
Once a route has been agreed, resources would need to be considered.
2.3
Data Quality
The Data Quality work continues to move forward:

An outline template for dealing with data quality has been drawn up and is being tested on data in
SITS. The template aims to provide a framework for gathering all the necessary information, assign
the problems and documenting changes that are made. An essential part of this process is to agree
data owners and responsibilities to ensure that data is monitored, corrected and maintained once the
initial fixes are complete.

Alongside work on pure data quality the team are looking at issues surrounding data structures with
the aim to produce a master list of Schools, Departments, programmes, JACS codes and cost
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centres. The list will contain all the core structures in each of the key IT systems at the university and
maps them all into a framework which can be used for reporting.

Work through July and August will focus on testing the template by working on data quality in the
SCE (Student Currently Enrolled) screen in SITS, as this screen contains some of the most critical
data that we will use for BI. The team will also be focussed on producing the master list of data
structures so this can be implemented in SITS in time for the new academic year. As a team it is
now important to decide how we will measure success in terms of data quality and what we will
measure to show that the work that is being completed has been successful.
All work on data quality and data structures will be completed in consultation with Schools and Professional
Services to ensure that the data is operationally correct and manageable for reporting.
2.4
Business Planning
Given the new focus on Business Planning, there will need to be a period of requirements gathering and a
definition of scope and objectives for the project.
The University currently has a Business Planning process that has been modified and refined over a number
of years. The current system is constrained by the software available and as a result does not provide the
necessary flexibility or insight into Business Planning. In addition it is very resource intensive, is open to
errors and is inefficient.
The focus on any requirements gathering should therefore be to identify:
a)
What we do currently:
 Processes and workflows
 Strengths/weaknesses of Business Planning
 Stakeholders and their input
 Bottlenecks
 Data quality issues
b)
What we would like to do in the future
 What should Business Planning incorporate?
 Optimum process
 Optimum business plan design
 Who needs to be involved?
 What other data should we include?
 What Business modelling and forecasting we need
The initial aim is for the BI team to gain a greater understanding of the Business Planning process, the staff
involved, and the planning timetable. Discussions with a School and with key stakeholders from Finance
would be beneficial in this process.
This can then be followed by a series of business planning workshops, supplemented with ad-hoc
discussions/interviews with key staff involved in the planning process.
The process and outline timescale for scoping the Business & Financial Planning are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
2.5
Initial information gathering and identification of key stakeholders August 2009
Requirements gathering workshops
September 2009
Finalising Business Plan design, workflows and deliverables
October 2009
Completion of scoping work and sign off of requirements
1st November 2009
Business Intelligence
Whilst there has been a refocus to Business Planning, the core Business Intelligence area remains a key part
of the project, in aiming to deliver reports against University KPI’s, a balance scorecard, and other reports as
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required.
The core Business Intelligence work will be focussed on developing a single data warehouse that consists of
a number of different business areas, containing data that is mapped, transformed, and structured to suit our
reporting needs. This will form the basis for the University KPI reports, and will also be used for the Business
Planning element of the project, which will call on the core BI system to pull data into Business Plans and
forecasts
2.6
Project budget
The project budget is £1.17million, of which £90k has been spent, mainly on project staff salaries (Project
Manager and Data analyst), consultancy for the early stages of the project, and payment back to the
Academic Services budget for some pre-project spend against the Dowry Fund (primarily for BI servers and
hardware).
We have learnt from the procurement process that our initial budget was realistic – the final 6 bids received at
tender ranged between £370k and £720k for software and consultancy to deliver BI and KPI reporting to the
University. In all cases these costs included a BI Planning tool, although the consultancy required to support
and deliver a Business Planning solution were not provided in full, due to the initial focus being primarily on
KPI’s.
The original project budget made allowances for additional (non recurrent) technical staff on the project, to
address any requirements for multiple mini-projects that could be run in parallel, to help deliver KPI reports
and other BI requirements across the University in a condensed timeframe. Whether this is required is not yet
certain, but will depend on the full scope of the project, and the timescales in which the Board requires the BI
and Business Planning solutions to be delivered.
Consultancy rates varied dramatically, but given the change in the economic climate since this project began,
the University would be in a very strong position to negotiate very competitive discounts for both consultancy
and software, which would enable us to use the project budget more flexibly.
The budget provision, the information generated from the procurement, and the above analysis suggest that
the University should be able to ensure it gets maximum value for money from the budget through provision
of both BI and Business Planning software. Some further analysis is necessary to give a definitive position
and which will need to be done prior to the next procurement on this, but at this stage the prognosis is good.
Recommendations



Clearly define the project scope, objectives, and deliverables
Define resource requirements and agree requirements of all team members.
Define the Business Planning goals for the BI project

The recommended structure going forward is to look at BI as a Programme of work with two separate
projects running. These projects would be headed up by two project managers:



Project 1 – Business Intelligence
Project 2 – Business & Financial Planning
It should be noted that although there are two project elements, they will be connected under a single
programme, with one budget, and one Project Board. Work streams may run across both projects
(e.g. data quality)
3.
THE MARKET
3.1
Market Research
The University has undertaken a significant amount of market research prior to the BI project, including
demonstrations from Microsoft, Cognos, Oracle, Business Objects and SAS. The BI product demonstrations
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were supplemented by visits to Warwick, Durham and Newcastle Universities, and a visit to BT to see how
each organisation uses (or intended to use) BI. The feedback from the Universities listed above proved to be
of limited value on tool selections, as decisions were made before the current offerings in BI were available.
For example, Nottingham chose Cognos 7 years ago, and implemented Business Planning at a later date
mainly because it fitted their existing system.
The BI project procurement process has also allowed us to see more of the major products (Oracle and
Business Objects) through supplier presentations, in addition to the WebFOCUS product offered through
Information Builders. The Proof of Concept workshops allowed us to investigate further still, with hands on
experience of the latest Oracle and Business Objects tools, and how they can be used to solve real life
University data and reporting issues.
Appendix A shows BI products currently being used in the HE sector, and where available, details of how BI
is being used at each institution.
3.2
Changes to the Market
The BI market has been going through a period of consolidation over the past 12 months and there has been
little change in the positions of the major suppliers – apart from the withdrawal of Microsoft from the
Corporate Performance Management (planning and budgeting) market, and the purchase of Business
Objects by SAP. According to Gartner the emphasis from the mega-vendors has been on integrating recent
acquisitions into their product stacks rather than making further major acquisitions.
3.3
Gartners View
The lists below give the leaders in both the BI sector and the Corporate Performance Management (CPM)
sector according to Gartner. During the previous procurement cycle it was decided that the University’s
requirements for data quality software were minimal as much of the work could be completed in house, and
therefore there would not be the requirement for specialist tools. As such this area of software is no longer
under consideration. The Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) tool is likely to be purchased as part of the
overall package and will not greatly influence the purchase decision so this has been omitted from this paper.
Business Intelligence
Leaders
Corporate Performance
Management Leaders
IBM Cognos
Oracle
Microsoft
SAP Business Objects
Oracle
IBM Cognos
SAP Business Objects
Information Builders
Microstrategy
SAS
The diagram below is taken from Gartner’s ‘Magic Quadrant’ for Corporate Performance Management, which
ranks BI vendors according to their position in the market. This ranking considers a wide range of factors,
and is considered one of the best indicators available to assess the quality and scope of the BI tools offered
by each vendor.
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Gartner’s assessment clearly puts Oracle, Business Objects, and Cognos as leaders in the BI Corporate
Performance Management field. This gives us confidence in our procurement process, as all three were in
our final 6 that were invited to tender, and two were part of our final shortlist. This would also mean we could
invest in these products with confidence, knowing that Gartner considers them to be the best tools on the
market and able to meet business needs more fully than their competitors.
Following a recent conversation with Gartner, the following points were noted:
General





There is currently a lot of interest in CPM (Corporate Performance Management) and Planning tools
Gartner are not surprised at our change in project emphasis
Given the current financial situation we should expect up to 50% discount on any product selected
There are many CPM products available for smaller organisations like ours.
Any supplier chosen should have a good understanding of the HE sector in terms of terminology,
funding models etc. Oracle, IBM and SAP all have specialist HE partners.
CPM Products





The two leading suppliers of enterprise CPM software are Oracle and SAP (Business Objects)
Oracle Hyperion is the Rolls Royce application in the marketplace today. However, Oracle OBIEE Plus
with Essbase would probably be sufficient for our needs
Similarly, Business Objects BPC tool may be slight overkill
Cognos TM1 planning engine is similar to Essbase – a lower-end tool with associated lower total cost
of ownership
Microsoft has recently withdrawn its dedicated CPM tool. Use of Microsoft for planning would require
SharePoint and Excel.
Other Options


There are not many open source CPM solutions mainly because large corporates (especially Finance
Directors) are nervous of using open source for mission-critical applications. This is unlikely to change
in the near future. The only offering that has such capabilities is Pentaho.
Another area which is growing in popularity and which may offer a quick and cost-effective option is
SaaS (Software as a Service). Adaptive Planning and Host Analytics are worth considering. However,
a good ETL tool would be required to extract the planning data for BI purposes.
Project Approach

Gartner advise that a single supplier, fully integrated solution for BI and CPM (Oracle, IBM or SAP) is
the best option to go for. However, best of breed is OK if we are willing to accept integration costs
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
Implementing CPM could provide a ‘quick win’ for the project and could be considered in parallel with
BI if resource permits.
Recommendations

Sufficient market research has been conducted to be able to proceed with the next phase of the
project. The Project Board are asked to approve this decision
4.
OPTIONS
In terms of buying BI software, there are a range of options available:
OPTION 1
Best of Breed – this term is used to define the strategy of buying the best tool for each specialised area of the
business process, instead of looking at a more integrated solution.

Advantages: each set of requirements is likely to be met more fully by the specialised tools

Disadvantages:
o Each system or component stands alone and has to be supported by the individual suppliers
o Where problems fall between systems it is sometimes difficult to assign responsibility to one
supplier
o Data moving between the systems will need bespoke development and maintenance with the
added risk of bugs being introduced
OPTION 2
Choose a single supplier based on the ‘Upgrade’ route - this option may be available because we already use
products from some of the BI vendors, and may be able to purchase additional software. The major software
suppliers are listed below with details of whether the upgrade route would be possible. It should be noted that
as a result of the procurement process, the team has increased knowledge of Oracle and Business Objects
and therefore a better understanding of both their advantages and disadvantages.
Oracle
Advantages:
 Current supplier of BI – justifiable upgrade
 One of the 2 chosen suppliers from the previous round
 Acknowledged leader in both BI and CPM
 Have Campus agreement for HE specific discounts
 Relatively cheap (provided the Campus Agreement deal is favourable)
 Proved popular with end-users during Proof of Concept stage
 Seen during Proof of Concept – would not need in depth evaluation
Disadvantages
 Requires complicated negotiation around Campus agreement
 ETL component not as good as others
SAP Business Objects
Advantages:
 Current supplier of BI – justifiable upgrade
 One of the 2 chosen suppliers from the previous round
 Acknowledged leader in both BI and CPM
 One of the best ETL tools on the market
 Seen during Proof of Concept – would not need in depth evaluation
Disadvantages
 Relatively expensive
IBM Cognos
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Advantages:
 Acknowledged leader in both BI and CPM
 Widely used within HE
Disadvantages
 Relatively expensive
 Not one of the top 2 chosen in previous round
 Not a current BI tool within the University – no justifiable upgrade, so could require EU tender route
 Not seen during Proof of Concept – would need in depth evaluation
SAS
Advantages:
 Acknowledged leader in BI
 Very good reputation for CPM package (just outside Leader Quadrant)
 Have Campus agreement for HE specific discounts, which would cover all staff and students for less
than the price of any of the other tools under consideration
 Relatively cheap
 Not a current supplier of BI, although we do have an education only licence – probably not a justifiable
upgrade in terms of BI, but worth investigating
Disadvantages
 Not one of the top 2 chosen in previous round
 Not seen during Proof of Concept – would need in depth evaluation
 Very limited use in the HE sector
Microsoft
Advantages:
 Acknowledged leader in BI
 Have Campus agreement for HE specific discounts (??)
 Relatively cheap
 Current supplier of BI – justifiable upgrade
Disadvantages
 Not one of the top 2 chosen in previous round
 Not seen during Proof of Concept – would need in depth evaluation
 Has no CPM component – would become best of breed solution
OPTION 3
Consultancy – we could use a split tender for software and consultancy, which would reduce risk, but may
limit our discount options and take longer. Depending on the software, this approach may bring each element
below the £139k EU limit, allowing us more flexibility on selection.
OPTION 4
Software – can it be broken down into modules? We could look to buy the BI and planning software in smaller
chunks, which may bring more flexibility, but may lose us any bulk discount or software ‘bundle’ advantages.
OPTION 5
We could restart the EU procurement process, implementing any lessons learnt:




We could use the PQQ process to filter out more suppliers that don’t fit our criteria
We could utilise the new, faster EU procurement route proposed by the OGC, where a restricted route
could be run in around 30 days
We could shortlist less suppliers, although the current EU route stipulates at least 5 should be invited
to tender, so this would only reduce our previous shortlist by 1.
Change how we run the selection process - there is a new legal requirement that was introduced by the
OGC during our previous procurement process, whereby all tenderers have to be treated equally
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throughout the process. If we invited 5 to tender, they would all need to do presentations and Proof of
Concept workshops, if that was our chosen evaluation method.
OPTION 6
We could run a different procurement process, although given the project value, our options may be limited,
and this would need to be scoped with Procurement and Legal Services
OPTION 7
We could look at Open source BI software, however, this is generally not used enterprise-wide, and is seen
as technically complex and resource intensive. As previously stated, there is also insufficient confidence in
the BI market for these tools to be a viable option for such a business critical process like Business Planning.
OPTION 8
We could just buy what we need, although the total value must be less than £139k over 5 years. If we restrict
the number of licences we buy initially, then ramp up over time, this might be a viable option. This would have
the benefit of a low initial cost, and keeping the value below the EU tender limit radar. However, given the
software costs from the major vendors, even a limited roll-out is likely to take us above £139k over 5 years,
and the drawbacks of having limited end-user penetration with the software might outweigh any benefits.
It should be noted that whatever route is chosen, the BI team should consider the proposed restructuring of
Schools into Colleges, and the impact on licensing for the BI software. It will be necessary to revisit the
original licence estimates, as there may be economies of scale with the new University structures that could
yield significant savings.
Recommendations




5
The most straightforward route would appear to be purchasing Oracle via an upgrade to existing
licenses. Oracle seems the most justifiable as it runs our current BI infrastructure including reporting
and the Admissions data warehouse as well as the ETL functionality.
Business Objects would also be an option as we have around 40 licenses for reporting but is the
most expensive of the options available.
Another option to stay under the OGC limit would be to investigate a low cost solution such as SAS
which offers favorable campus agreements and is currently used in the Business School for
educational purposes.
The option of an EU tender route is always available, and could be shortened to as little as 30 days.
This route would allow more detailed exploration of software and suppliers.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Once the recommendations in this paper have been agreed, the BI Project team will report progress to the
Board, who will be asked to approve the following:





Objectives and scope for the Project
Business Planning and BI deliverables
Recommended approach
Proposed project timescales
Project resource requirements
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Appendix 1 – BI usage in the HE sector
This summary was compiled from responses from the admin planning JISCMail list, contacts at other
HEI’s, and web research. It is not comprehensive and the inclusion of an HEI does not necessarily
mean they are using the BI tools enterprise-wide. At the time of writing, it has not been possible to contact
all HEI’s listed, and therefore we may know the tools they are using, but not their BI focus.
BI tool
University
BI focus
Actuate eReport
Roehampton
Operational reporting on student data – recruitment
targets, curricula, timetabling
IBM Cognos
East Anglia
Glamorgan
Nottingham
Nottingham Trent
Queen Mary London
Sheffield
Student numbers, income planning and institutional
budgeting
Management Planning
Staff and student reporting - finance, HR and payroll,
research management and admissions systems
Staffordshire
Warwick
Business Planning
Information
Builders/WebFOCUS
De Montford
Management reports and dashboards
Microsoft performance
Point / Proclarity
Lancaster
Oracle
Northumbria
Business Planning
Bedfordshire
Dublin City
Heriot-Watt
Imperial
Liverpool John Moores
Manchester
Metropolitan
Middlesex
Student data and management - Intelligent campus
Panorama Novaview
Teesside
QlikTech QlikView
Anglia Ruskin
Research data
Student recruitment and enrolment
Curriculum and student data management
Operational reporting – application and registration
statistics, space planning and budgeting
Bath Spa
Sunderland
SAP Business Objects
Birmingham
Cardiff
Durham
East Anglia
Edinburgh
Greenwich
Newcastle
Northampton
Staffordshire
Surrey
University College
Dublin
Student records and finance data
Research awards, staff data and lifelong learning data
Research and teaching data
Operational reporting for Finance and HR data
Student data reporting
Financial data and planning
Student data and management
Finance, personnel & payroll, admissions data
BI Reporting against finance, student, and HR systems
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West of England
York
SAS
Swansea
Time and attendance monitoring, admissions data,
library, and accommodation
Funding returns, academic statistics, FTE load
planning and forecasting
The Open University
Tableau
LSE
Oxford
Warwick
General BI (not Planning)
Student data and management
Other BI products available but for which a UK HEI has not yet been identified as a user:
Bissantz
LogiXML
Talend
Indicee
Microstrategy
Tibco Spotfire
JasperSoft
Pentaho
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