Client relationships are designed to promote the growth of information empowered performance cultures that generate above industry average business outcomes. Most client relationships begin with a focused period of activity that quickly tapers off to a more strategic advisory relationship. Engagements begin with an assessment of business and IT strategies, objectives and processes, followed by a series of inter-related projects to achieve prioritized business objectives through enabling technologies.

Summary

Client relationships are designed to promote the growth of information empowered performance cultures that generate above industry average business outcomes.  Most client relationships begin with a focused period of activity that quickly tapers off to a more strategic advisory relationship.  Engagements begin with an assessment of business and IT strategies, objectives and processes, followed by a series of inter-related projects to achieve prioritized business objectives through enabling technologies.  Skills and analytic training are almost always involved to enable management and internal resources to support and maintain a productive program over time.

Global Software Developer – Enterprise Data Warehouse

• The client has evolved over the last 30 years from an infrastructure software developer into a leading-edge developer of a full range of infrastructure software and business-critical applications, both from internal development and from over 200 acquisitions.  The dynamic business environment was constantly changing, and the company was attempting to manage with information being cut and pasted into over hundreds of spreadsheets and multiple Access databases.  They implemented SAP in several of their global regions, with plans to expand implementation to achieve global coverage.  
• The assessment concluded that the client desired an enterprise data warehouse with business-user self-service reporting; standardized product and business-unit naming conventions; standardized and automated reporting and analytics to help the organization reduce the time and cost for developing and maintaining business-unit spreadsheet-based reporting capabilities; and, business groups guidance on how to use analytics to increase sales, better manage expenses, optimize business processes and best serve customers’ needs and wants 
• Working closely with Product Development Management, which included several members of Corporate Finance, business information requirements were identified; data sources were analyzed; an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) was architected and implemented; the Engineering Product group Data Mart was designed and implemented; an enterprise data dictionary was developed; and, an extensive reports library with executive, management and operations reports and analytics was developed and deployed.
• The development project was completed on time and within budget.  The client team was trained, enabling them to expand the rollout themselves to a wider community.
• The EDW platform will be expended into finance, sales and marketing and other areas of the company so the organization can realize how an enterprise reporting platform can directly and measurably contribute to sustained growth and profitability.

Private Bank – Enterprise Data Warehouse

• Rapidly growing southeastern U.S. mid-market private bank wanted to streamline and improve reporting to better manage productivity and expenses.  Assessed and profiles business objectives, processes and application data sources, as well as multiple, applications-based reporting capabilities that relied heavily on spreadsheets.  The CFO spent significant time personally developing most reports in an outdated client-server reporting tool, importing report output into Excel for board reports and sent management reports via e-mail attachments.  Only a few people in Finance were able to develop reports, limiting enterprise information access and value.
• Serving as Executive Advisor and Project Manager, upgraded to current Cognos web-based reporting platform using SQL Server database for data warehouse; customized BI Banking dimensional model and Cognos Framework Manager meta data to reflect unique client attributes; developed ETL processes to import and integrate Construction Lending, SEI Wealth Management and Salesforce.com CRM data with Jack Henry core system data to provide a single view of customer relationships.
• Designed and developed role-based scorecards and dashboards, personalized through security profiles, to support new Retail Banking Performance Program.  Iteratively extended scorecards and dashboards to Lending, Wealth Management, Finance and HR. Featured high performance success stories/case studies in weekly productivity meetings where information promoted productivity.  Conducted periodic reviews to ensure business needs are being best served by timely, relevant information.

Financial Services Software Vendor – Banking ODS Reporting Product Development

• A major financial services software vendor required a new reporting and analytics product suite to be competitive.  Attempts had been made to develop a proprietary reporting tool, and another group was trying to develop a Microsoft-based reporting tool, but progress was slow. Executive and product management had no vision of what was needed.  An Assessment was conducted of industry reporting tools, customer needs and interests, and internal resource skills and experience.  An evaluation was conducted and Cognos was selected as the BI Reporting OEM Partner.
• As Project Manager and Team Leader, recruited a seasoned Cognos BI resource to work with other team members with very solid MS SQL Server skills and experience.  A small group of progressive customers were invited to establish a Performance Advisory Council (PAC) to participate in defining reporting requirements.  Using Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology, a proof of concept (POC) was developed and deployed to PAC for review and testing.  With modifications and enhancements being quickly identified and applied, iterative POCs were progressively developed and released to the PAC.  The first release went into beta testing within 6 months and was released for general availability as version 1.0 three months later.
• Renegotiated OEM agreement, significantly increasing margin.  Price schedules, training programs, sales training and marketing programs were develop prior to product launch.  Product was very well received by customers, as well as prospective customers.  New core system sales were made, based on new reporting product.  First year forecast was exceeded by over 400%, setting new record for new product revenu

Banking – Finance Data Mart

• Progressive mid-market bank required improved Financial and ALCO reporting and analytics, as well as a foundation for integrated operations reporting.  Executives and the management team were interviewed to define business and information objectives, information literacy levels, and likes/dislikes with current core system reporting capability.  Worked with IT to identify application data sources and LOB reporting support requirements.
• Defined and developed dimensional model to satisfy reporting and time-series analytics.  Mapped data sources to new model; developed meta data and ETL processes to integrate data into new data warehouse.  Leveraged and extended core system reporting tools from Cognos into enterprise reporting platform.
• Trained IT Administrator, LOB Power Users, and Business User Communities in Banking, Lending, Finance and Wealth Management.  Coordinated lunch-time “Brown Bag Seminars” to feature various users who had accomplished positive business outcomes.
• With new multidimensional models, developed new ALCO reports that immediately saved the CFO and Controller over 10 days per month in manual spreadsheet report development.  New consolidated financial reporting also saved Controller and Financial Analyst significant time aggregating data in spreadsheet and manually calculating allocations.  Good project – high satisfaction – high measurable ROI.

Banking – Performance Analytics

• High growth mid-market bank with new management team from large bank needed immediate access to financial and operations reporting and analytics to implement growth plan.  Interviewed new top and line of business executives, as well as operations managers and staff to define business and technology objectives, processes and challenges.  Developed data warehouse architecture and modeled information flow to provide team with visual understanding of technology objective; trained and mentored team to develop technology platform components using Jack Henry Silverlake core system as primary applications data source, MS SQL Server as data warehouse and Cognos BI tools for reporting and analytics.
• Implemented BI Banking Reporting Library; quickly customized reports to reflect unique client attributes and information needs. Layered and linked analytic models and multidimensional reports with relational reports to strengthen interactive thinking environment with drill-through capabilities.
• Provided ongoing mentoring for business user communities and IT Performance Analytics team.

Financial Services Holding Company – Consolidated Financial Data Mart

• Performance-driven mid-Atlantic financial services holding company (HC), with community bank and non-banking subsidiaries, wanted to consolidate financial information to streamline financial reporting.  Conducted assessment of division and holding company regulatory, board, management and operations financial reporting requirements; developed financial dimensional model (FDM) to satisfy reporting and analytics requirements; mapped required division financial applications data to FDM, developed ETL processes and meta data to populate data warehouse.
• Worked through HC CFO to establish, train and lead cross-division financial reporting team (FinTeam); lead FinTeam to develop standard reporting and analytics library to serve all divisions, with each division having report authoring capability to support unique information needs.  Provided ongoing support and mentoring to FinTeam.

Financial Services Software Vendor – Product Enhancement and BI Team Training

• A major Financial Services Industry software vendor was struggling to deliver a reporting capability that satisfied their mid-market bank customers reporting needs.  An assessment of the reporting product, customer training programs and customer satisfaction with reporting product functionality and training services revealed that core system vendor BI resources needed additional training to effectively guide and support customers. 
• An Administrator training program series was developed for and provide to the core system vendor BI team; and, a series of Power User and Active User training programs were developed and conducted for customers.  Data warehouse architecture training was provided, focusing on dimensional models for Finance, Lending, Banking and Operations.  ETL scripts and master data management principles were also addressed and applied to their product management program.  The BI team and customers gave high satisfaction ratings to the training.

Power Generation Manufacturer – Operations Data Mart

• An award-winning global leader in power generation equipment manufacturing wanted to strengthen performance and standardize on a single reporting platform by establishing an operations data mart.  An initial assessment was completed to identify and prioritize processes, challenges and objectives; subsequent assessments were conducted to identify reporting requirements, applications reporting tools and IT infrastructure investments.  Cognos was the BI platform; Informatica was the ETL system; and, Oracle was the data warehouse platform. 
• The project was organized to iteratively include the various user communities and their application data sources, applying lessons learned to each group.  Significant time was invested in data cleansing and resolving data entry inconsistencies.  Time was also invested in defining consistent terms and calculations in the meta data layer to eliminate inconsistencies between the old reporting platforms.  Business user training was a high priority to maximize operations productivity and minimize IT expenses.
• Offshore resources were employed to develop the solution.  Iterative releases provided good user feedback and minimized development time.

Healthcare – Reporting Productivity and Expense Management

• Large U.S. healthcare services provider sought to improve reporting productivity, while reducing report development and deployment time and expense.  Engaged to identify opportunities to impact quality, productivity and cost through streamlined reporting and analytics.  Assessment involved meeting with executive sponsors to understand business objectives, processes and information interests, and interviewing division managers, business unit management, Finance, IT, HR and other administrative teams to identify reporting satisfaction, likes and dislikes, information needs, and report development and deployment process time.
• Profiled applications and linked operations reporting tools; identified data naming convention and measure calculation inconsistencies and across reporting silos; organized reports libraries to identify redundant reports with inconsistent data; and, assessed business user information literacy to estimate skills training requirement.  Developed and presented report to IT steering committee:
  • Profiled and described the current and recommended source data to information flow processes;
  • Described the need for a process to manage data consistency and accuracy;
  • Presented the opportunity to standardize on a single, business-user-oriented reporting platform to minimize/eliminate redundant reports and improve organizational productivity;
  • Identified the need for cascading scorecards and role-based dashboards to provide quality, productivity and cost feedback to managers and their teams.
  • Defined prioritized strategic initiatives in a project plan to achieve these objectives.
• Used the BI ROI model to identify and calculate the time and cost of current reporting processes.  Worked with executive sponsor to apply conservative estimates to impact of recommendations.  Measurable project ROI was estimated to be over $500K in first year.

Banking – Financial and Operations Reporting and Analytics

• New England mid-market bank with sustained above industry average growth and profitability wanted to streamline and enhance reporting and analytics against consolidated data from multiple applications.  Assessed executive and operations information needs, reporting processes and data sources; developed and presented Assessment to executive team for review and discussion.  Developed project plan to iteratively address prioritized objectives.
• Developed proof of concept (POC); trained business users and IT support team with their data on new models; identified Phase I reporting development objectives and evaluation team.  Employed rapid development methodology, iteratively developing and rapidly deploying alpha reporting deliverables to evaluation team.  Deliverables and process was well received; proceeded to develop, test and deliver beta and final Phase 1 deliverables.  Continued process with additional business unit/line of business reporting objectives.

Consumer Packaged Goods – Beverages

• High profile New England craft beer brewing company had grown rapidly, but was still extracting data into spreadsheets for management and operations reporting.  Engaged to streamline and enhance financial and sales reporting and analysis.  Conducted assessment to profile business user community, information needs and data sources; developed requirements document and sent RFP to leading BI vendors.  Coordinated BI vendor presentations, evaluation and selection.  Cognos was selected; an Oracle database was used for the data warehouse. 
• Implemented Cognos BI platform; developed dimensional models, meta data and initial reporting library to serve business information needs; trained IT and user communities; and, provided periodic support to modify/enhance platform and extend deployment.

Telecommunications – HR Data Mart

• The major communications company wanted to strengthen employee satisfaction, productivity and cost management.  An assessment of objectives, processes, technology and resources identified the need for an HR data mart that would integrate data from the HR, Payroll and Operations.  A project plan with prioritized objectives and deliverables, tasks, time-lines and resource requirements was presented. 
• Serving as Project Manager, provided training to re-skill/up-skill IT members of project team with architecture model and technology skills.  Developed data to information flow charts and scripted ETL processes as documented training exercises to ensure the project team was aligned with project processes and desired outcomes.
• Applied documentation to technology, developing HR data mart, ETL processes and meta data.  Imported initial data set to develop proof of concept (POC), which was presented to HR evaluation team for review and testing.  Incorporated comments into iteratively progressive POCs until enough content was included to finalize and test beta before releasing to production.  Provided IT team with “Train the Trainer” sessions to help them learn how to develop, organize and communicate training materials to the HR business users.

Retail – Online Purchasing Analytics

• High-fashion retailer launched online shopping site and wanted to analyze sales dynamics to better understand customer preferences and purchasing patterns.  Assessed executive and user communities needs and information literacy; reviewed data sources and BI platforms; developed proof of concept and project plan to achieve analytics objectives. 
• Led team to develop dimensional data mart to satisfy analytics and drill-through requirements; developed extract, transform and load (ETL) processes and meta data for moving data from web-based transaction applications data source into data mart.  Standard reports libraries were developed, as well as interactive analytic models.  Cognos web-based platform was the BI tool and Oracle was used for the data warehouse.
• As one of the first analytic models of global, 24-hour purchasing patterns, new visual presentation experiments were developed and explored with business user groups.  Very valuable knowledge was discovered about customer patterns, re: product purchases by price range by time of day by customer segment by country that was used to manage product presentation and new product introduction timing.

Banking – Performance Technology Advisory Services

• A rapidly growing NY mid-market bank was struggling to use core system vendor Cognos reporting tools, and required immediate access to financial and operations data to support continued growth.  Interviewed executives, operating managers and financial reporting team to identify and prioritize needs, wants and challenges.  Data integration and modeling, infrastructure refinement, report development and user skills training were the primary needs.
• Serving as an Advisor and Mentor, provided training to the IT team on data warehouse development principles and architectures, meta data management processes and ETL scripting procedures.  Guided development, testing, implementation, enhancements and production.  Provided training to business user communities on BI tools and report development functionality.
• Provided ongoing support to automate processes, extend deployment farther into the organization and iteratively develop and refine reporting, analytics, scorecard and dashboard capabilities.

Banking – Investments Data Warehouse

• A large New England bank wanted to integrate data from several applications, acquired through acquisition, and develop an Investments data warehouse.  Conducted assessment of strategic and operational business objectives; analyzed information needs and defined detail and multidimensional database architecture; mapped integration of multiple application data sources through meta data layer and into Oracle data warehouse; developed user community profiles with user roles and security to manage access and functionality.
• Standardized BI platform on Cognos, trained IT Administrators and Business User communities; retired application reporting tools; and, streamlined line of business reporting processes by automating report generation and minimizing reliance on spreadsheets.  IT and User satisfaction was high – reporting cycle time and total reporting cost were dramatically reduced.
• Identified a redundant payment in first month that totally cost-justified project cost – 100% ROI in first month!

Banking – Retail Banking Analytics

• A large, acquisition-driven Northeast bank wanted to analyze customer relationships to identify opportunities to strengthen customer satisfaction and cross-sell / up-sell products to existing customers.  Conducted assessment to define the gap between current and desired business and information objectives and reporting environment, as well as user community satisfaction, analytics sophistication and information literacy. 
• Developed standard customer analytics model across all applications to integrate data.  Using existing reporting tools, exploited Cognos BI platform functionality, unknown to client Administrator or Power Users, to develop new customer analytics models with combined visual and numeric presentations.  New solutions very nicely satisfied client information interests.
• Conducted IT Administrator and business analyst Power-User training to transition knowledge and skills to internal team.  Good project.