More than 70,000 students enroll each year at the University of Illinois, which offers more than 150 fields of study in 30 colleges, free-standing schools, and institutes across 3 campuses: Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign (US). The university, one of the original land-grant colleges, opened its doors in 1867, and since then has awarded more than 500,000 degrees.
The Urbana-Champaign campus houses the largest public engineering library and third-largest academic library in the US, after Harvard and Yale. The university is recognized as a world-class center for medical, computing, engineering, and agricultural research. Faculty and staff, for example, built the first computer owned entirely by a university; developed a computer-based learning system; and created Mosaic, the first popular computer browser. Its Chicago-based Medical Center is well-known for organ transplantation and research into diabetes. Nearly twenty faculty and alumni have received Nobel Prizes, and sixteen have won Pulitzer Prizes. Alumni have also created leading companies such as Oracle Corp., Netscape Communications, and Siebel Systems. Its annual operating budget is more than $3.6 billion (USD), and sponsored research exceeds $600 million (USD).
Business Problem
As an extension of a university-wide initiative in 2001 to replace the university's course systems, the question became how to access data and report on it using the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The university planned to implement the ERP system in phases, enabling it to develop a system incrementally, and to design in stages the output required to meet users' needs. Based on the depth and breadth of the university's core systems, the development of a centralized system incrementally allowed each department's and business unit's needs to be assessed and met.
The issue associated with the new implementation involved whether to use the ERP system for report generation, or to leverage the features and functionality of a system tailor-made to provide these features. With the help of Linda Bair, executive director of Illinois University, a decision support (DS) group was created. Bair had done the required research to determine which type of software would meet the needs of the university's reporting and analysis requirements. The decision to create a data warehousing architecture with a business intelligence (BI) layer on top seemed to best meet the organization's business requirements. The DS group's responsibility was to develop a data warehousing and reporting environment, which would provide users access to the information they needed for reporting and analysis.
The data warehousing group was directly aligned with the development of the ERP system. As each module was built, the DS group identified the reporting needs of the associated departments. The DS group developed the data warehousing, reporting, and BI structure as an application layer on top of the ERP system to identify the required data needed from the system. By identifying the reporting and analysis needs in parallel with the ERP system, the DS group was able to identify the requirements that would later be transferred to help in vendor selection. Although the data warehouse was being built simultaneously, application layer development required the tools of a third party vendor. With this structure in place, the choice of BI vendor became key.
The Urbana-Champaign campus houses the largest public engineering library and third-largest academic library in the US, after Harvard and Yale. The university is recognized as a world-class center for medical, computing, engineering, and agricultural research. Faculty and staff, for example, built the first computer owned entirely by a university; developed a computer-based learning system; and created Mosaic, the first popular computer browser. Its Chicago-based Medical Center is well-known for organ transplantation and research into diabetes. Nearly twenty faculty and alumni have received Nobel Prizes, and sixteen have won Pulitzer Prizes. Alumni have also created leading companies such as Oracle Corp., Netscape Communications, and Siebel Systems. Its annual operating budget is more than $3.6 billion (USD), and sponsored research exceeds $600 million (USD).
Business Problem
As an extension of a university-wide initiative in 2001 to replace the university's course systems, the question became how to access data and report on it using the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The university planned to implement the ERP system in phases, enabling it to develop a system incrementally, and to design in stages the output required to meet users' needs. Based on the depth and breadth of the university's core systems, the development of a centralized system incrementally allowed each department's and business unit's needs to be assessed and met.
The issue associated with the new implementation involved whether to use the ERP system for report generation, or to leverage the features and functionality of a system tailor-made to provide these features. With the help of Linda Bair, executive director of Illinois University, a decision support (DS) group was created. Bair had done the required research to determine which type of software would meet the needs of the university's reporting and analysis requirements. The decision to create a data warehousing architecture with a business intelligence (BI) layer on top seemed to best meet the organization's business requirements. The DS group's responsibility was to develop a data warehousing and reporting environment, which would provide users access to the information they needed for reporting and analysis.
The data warehousing group was directly aligned with the development of the ERP system. As each module was built, the DS group identified the reporting needs of the associated departments. The DS group developed the data warehousing, reporting, and BI structure as an application layer on top of the ERP system to identify the required data needed from the system. By identifying the reporting and analysis needs in parallel with the ERP system, the DS group was able to identify the requirements that would later be transferred to help in vendor selection. Although the data warehouse was being built simultaneously, application layer development required the tools of a third party vendor. With this structure in place, the choice of BI vendor became key.
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