07.19.07
Posted in Business Intelligence (BI), Federal at 3:07 pm by irusgroup
Budgeting and planning is essentially the same across vertical markets, however, in the public sector there are distinct differences that only a firm intimate with the process can understand. If I have a certain amount of money left to spend through the end of the year, and my spending curve is such that I will run out of money in the tenth month, I know that I need to do something now so that I don’t run out of money in the tenth month. This may sound like a simple challenge, however, it’s not. It requires a sound and diligent process to ensure that the right data has been utilized to get the information and turn it into the knowledge to make the right business decisions.
The problem is that the government must have money available, so they need to find funds from other places to cover shortfalls. An example is the Iraq war. The amount allocated to the war initially was quickly used up so money had to be found in other parts of the government to fund the war. The impact of these decisions trickles down to the lowest level. For example, how easy is it to move the money allocated for upgrading base facilities to support soldiers on the ground?
Here’s the big issue. The good thing is that Government captures most of the information that they need. The bad thing is that they capture it in legacy systems that don’t talk to each other. What we see so often is the classic situation when someone gets information out of one system, then keys it in the second system, and then re-keys it in the third system and so on and so forth. Government understands that this is their system and has to deal with it, but they also know that there are smarter, more efficient ways to get to the data and make sense of it.
Unfortunately, the government has to make decisions based on data housed in multiple silos strewn across multiple data sources that don’t talk to one another. For instance, we had a government client who wanted to see budget vs. actuals reports at a glance, but couldn’t because the data was in two different data sites. It was nearly impossible for them to access the data and put into one report, until we built a new system for them that brought everything together.
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Posted in Enterprise/Corporate Performance Management (EPM/CPM), Federal at 3:06 pm by irusgroup
Budgeting and planning is essentially the same across vertical markets, however, in the public sector there are distinct differences that only a firm intimate with the process can understand. If I have a certain amount of money left to spend through the end of the year, and my spending curve is such that I will run out of money in the tenth month, I know that I need to do something now so that I don’t run out of money in the tenth month.
This may sound like a simple challenge, however, it’s not. It requires a sound and diligent process to ensure that the right data has been utilized to get the information and turn it into the knowledge to make the right business decisions.
The problem is that the government must have money available, so they need to find funds from other places to cover shortfalls. An example is the Iraq war. The amount allocated to the war initially was quickly used up so money had to be found in other parts of the government to fund the war. The impact of these decisions trickles down to the lowest level. For example, how easy is it to move the money allocated for upgrading base facilities to support soldiers on the ground?
Here’s the big issue. The good thing is that Government captures most of the information that they need. The bad thing is that they capture it in legacy systems that don’t talk to each other. What we see so often is the classic situation when someone gets information out of one system, then keys it in the second system, and then re-keys it in the third system and so on and so forth. Government understands that this is their system and has to deal with it, but they also know that there are smarter, more efficient ways to get to the data and make sense of it.
Unfortunately, the government has to make decisions based on data housed in multiple silos strewn across multiple data sources that don’t talk to one another. For instance, we had a government client who wanted to see budget vs. actuals reports at a glance, but couldn’t because the data was in two different data sites. It was nearly impossible for them to access the data and put into one report, until we built a new system for them that brought everything together.
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07.07.07
Posted in Business Intelligence (BI) at 2:21 pm by irusgroup
Business intelligence projects require functional, technical, and domain expertise in order to succeed. We provide the functional and the technical, although we’re very strong in understanding the business needs of our clients. We’ve been able to establish ourselves as one of the top small-business Oracle business intelligence shops that services Federal Government agencies mainly because we understand how the Federal Government budgeting and planning processes work. Our extensive Oracle background allow us to extend Oracle technology beyond what it has been capable of. For example, we had custom built web interfaces for Oracle apps many years before functionality was built into the system.
We’ve been an early adopter of the Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting solutions years before it came out. Prior to Oracle releasing EPB, there were many budgeting tools, but not many applications. Since there were not many applications built, there were not many budgeting process tools around. Our clients have come to depend on us to build out their systems for them and put these processes into place. Although the pending integration of the Hyperion product lines will probably spell the end for EPB, we’ve successfully brought it to market and helped clients get up and running.
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