Case Study 1- Properties Das Ist Gut 4U (BI Implementation)

Introduction
“Properties Das Ist Gut 4U” (“PDIG4U”) is Germany’s largest diversified
property group. PDIG4U develop, own and manage retail centers, business
parks, logistics centers, and office buildings within large metropolitan and
regional centers.

Company profile
PDIG4U was founded in 1992 with a vision to "not merely achieve growth and
profits but to make a worthwhile contribution to the development of our cities
and great country." PDIG4U has a long and proud history of creating places
that meet the needs of their customers and communities. Currently employing
over 900 people and with over 40 locations, PDIG4U continues to expand.

Over the years of expansion PDIG4U has managed their own financial data
and reporting systems. These systems have proliferated across the group as
each department built reporting solutions to cater to their own needs.
Company reporting is now done using a mix of outdated technology platforms
(JD Edwards and an inventory and reporting system), with bolt on reporting
aggregators built in MS Access data bases and MS Excel spreadsheets
containing complex macros.

A recent project implemented a new CRM system to manage leasing and

sales that provides a modern interface operating via the corporate intranet.
This CRM system interfaces with existing finance and reporting systems to
pull data as the old systems remain the source of truth, and it also contains a
whole new set of data fields developed to improve management of the retail
and office centers. These new data sets are only held in the CRM system and
are not passed to the old systems. The data logic maps and data dictionary
are out of date and this is causing issues across the group

Problem statement
PDIG4U has a large team in the finance department managing multiple
systems, databases and using complex excel spreadsheets to produce the
multiple levels of financial reporting across the group. Reporting often takes
weeks, is easily prone to error, and the spreadsheets are becoming unstable
and unwieldy. In addition, reporting formats and ability to access data (drill
down or aggregate) is no longer meeting the needs of the various
stakeholders who rely on this information to make business decisions on a
daily basis and to compile reports for external stakeholders.

Stakeholders
Senior Executive Management (CIO, CFO, CEO and other executives in
senior management roles across the group): Currently receive detailed and
aggregate reporting in MS Powerpoint files every month. The problem is that
information is too old to be actionable and only provides a snapshot of past
results. This group would like aggregated real time data at call in a
dashboard format they can access from their desktop or from an iPad or other
mobile device. Critical Data should be presented in easy to use graphs with
the ability for individual executives to drill down into the data to gain more a
detailed view and to have a standard set of filters so they can sort, organize
and extract data themselves. Currently, they are very frustrated with both
timeliness and presentation of the data.

Divisional VPs (manage group divisions such as office, retail, industrial,

property development and sales). Currently get weekly divisional reports from
finance, more detail oriented than executive and will pore over spreadsheets
to check information. Again this data is old and error prone. They are
constantly requesting updates and ad-hoc reports from the finance team.
This data is focused on individual divisions rather than a whole group view.
They expect the same “look and feel” to data as the Executive Management
Team, i.e., in a dashboard and graphical format, with the additional
requirement that they want data to be pre-filtered to only show their division.
They are very excited about this project and are giving it their full attention.

Finance and reporting team (reporting to the CFO): Team of over 30 staff
responsible for producing all financial reports for anyone in PDIG4U. They
have highly developed skills in access and excel and are extensive users of
pre-existing systems though are only starting to integrate the new data in the
CRM platform into their excel reports (not using CRM reporting capabilities
yet). They import all data into excel spreadsheets for manipulation, reporting
and investigation. This team currently manages over 30 standard reports,
some of the reports have over 10,000 lines of data.

They are incredibly knowledgeable about the financial data and its meaning
but they find it challenging to provide meaningful data to PDIG4U and they
realize that they have become a bottle neck for the company. They are
somewhat apprehensive about this project as they are used to being the ‘go
to ‘people for information. Consequently, they are change resistant and fear
for their jobs..

IT team (reporting to CIO): They manage existing systems including: all

applications, systems access, security, and helpdesk services. They know the
current systems are nearing end of life but take pride in maintaining them for
organizational use. They realize that they are often seen as scapegoats and
are a frustration to the business who want a more modern reporting platform.
Whilst not sponsoring this project, the CIO is partnering with the CFO to
ensure best of breed design and usability of the new platform is an outcome
of the project.

Center mangers (reporting to the divisional executives): They are in charge

of the day to day management of each retail, office or industrial center. Their
role is to manage the local cleaning and maintenance contracts and center
staff. They need real time access to financial data on their own center and are
also interested in finances of similar centers across the nation for comparative
evaluation. Very detail oriented and extensively use the current excel
reporting, though are very frustrated with always having to go through the
finance team. They cannot wait to be able to access, sort and print out their
own data

Retail leasing portfolio managers (reporting to the Sales Executive with

dotted line to the Center Manager(s)): They manage a portfolio of retail and
office spaces across a geographic region. Their role is to maximize the
leasing and profitability of the spaces within their portfolio. Needs are similar
to the divisional executives, they are very supportive of the project and will be
the change champions and day to day decision makers and road block
removers.

Project Overview
The project goal is to: Design and Build a world class financial reporting on a
business intelligence platform, this platform will interface seamlessly with
underlying corporate systems CRM and JD Edwards and MS office suite.

High Level Requirements

Data will be held in common enterprise information layer in the BI server with
over night files sent from existing JDE and real time interface with CRM. Old
reporting and inventory system will be retired at the same time.

The new platform will be accessible via the intranet and from supported
mobile devices and remote workstations. It will be a single source of truth for
whole company and which will cater to all the reporting needs of various
stakeholders.
In some cases stakeholders will request new base data fields not available in
CRM or JDE, a strategic decision has been made to build these in JDE or
CRM. Aggregation, calculation and presentation will be performed from the
base data by BI system (OLAP server)

There will be suite of standard reports built for all stakeholder groups, from
executive dashboards to detailed financial data reports. The Finance team will
be trained in BI analytics with ability to create new reports or change existing
suite.

A high level business case has been approved to fund the next phase which
is to
 Define the report requirements and high level design of the reports,
 identification of all new data requirements and data sources
 identification of all system interfaces
 process map the new finance reporting processes capturing roles and
responsibilities of all parties
 build a data dictionary and validate all current report calculations (from
excel spreadsheets)
  work with IT to validate a data hierarchy model
 define access and security requirements
 work out a budget and time frame to do detail design, build, test and
implement

Potential Business Analysis Scope

To help you start to think about this project - as the senior BA allocated to this
project, your role may include:
 plan and manage all the business analysis tasks, activities and deliverables
(assume a small team of BA and SME’s under your guidance)
 report to the project manager
 work out the best approach to requirement gathering, documenting and
report design (which methodology, which techniques, how to explain this and
get support)
 plan and manage iterative workshops to gather data requirements, usability
requirements, and reporting ‘look and feel’ design requirements
 build data dictionary and validate with SME and finance managers
 design report formats focusing on usability, navigation and presentation of
data
 work with technical team (developers and BI solution architects0 to ensure
business needs are able to be met technically
 manage scope creep and additional requirements, impact analysis, costings
and present to stakeholders for approval / rejection
 report to senior stakeholders on progress
 manage analysis risks and issues
 Identify solution options
 Develop recommendation
 process map the To- be finance reporting processes with business
 manage report reviews and sign offs
 assist PM with set up of central project sharepoint site for document
management
Ideas for Using This Case Study
Module 1&2 – Introduction and Key Concepts:
The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. As a business analyst, what role do you think you play here?
2. How would you apply the BACCMTM to this challenge?
3. What types of Stakeholders would you want to engage at this time and why?

Module 3 – Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring:

The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. What would you consider in developing your Business Analysis Approach?
2. What would you include in your Stakeholder Engagement Plan?
3. How would determine your Information Management Approach?

Module 4 – Elicitation and Collaboration:

The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. What decisions do you need to make to adequately Prepare for Elicitation
sessions?
2. What techniques would you use to Confirm Elicitation Results?
3. What will you do to Manage Stakeholder Collaboration?

Module 5 – Requirements Life Cycle Management:

The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. What will you do to Trace Requirements and Designs?
2. How will you Prioritize Requirements?
3. How will you Approve Requirements and Designs?

Module 6 – Strategy Analysis:

The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. What will you do to Analyze Current State?
2. What will you do to Define Future State?
3. What does your Change Strategy look like and why is this important?

Module 7 – Requirements Analysis and Design Definition:

The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. What models will you use to Specify and Model Requirements?
2. Why is Validate Requirements particularly important and what techniques will
you use?
3. How will you Analyze Potential Value and what will you do to help reach a
decision to Recommend a Solution?

Module 8 – Solution Evaluation:

The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. How will you Measure Solution Performance?
2. What are you hoping to achieve when Analyzing Performance Measures?
3. Why is Recommend Actions to Increase Solution Value an important task and
how would you do this?
Module 9 – Underlying Competencies:
The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. Which underlying competencies are particularly important for this work?
2. Why are they so important?

Module 10-1 to 10-5 - Techniques:

Each module covers 10 techniques. The following are potential areas of discussion:
1. After reviewing all the techniques, which do you consider most relevant to this
work?
a. Identify the technique and its purpose
b. Describe the technique
c. Identify its elements
d. Know its strengths and limitations

Module 11-1 The Agile Perspective

Module 11-2 The Business Intelligence Perspective

Although you will want to review all perspectives, note: this perspective is particularly
relevant. The following are potential areas of discussion in the context of this work:
1. Understand what’s involved in BI-related work
2. Discuss Change Scope
3. Identify Business Analysis Scope
4. Discuss Methodologies and Approaches
5. Review Underlying Competencies that are required
6. Discuss the Impact on Knowledge Areas

Module 11-3 The Information Technology Perspective

Module 11-4 The Business Architecture Perspective

Module 11-5 The Business Process Management Perspective