16. Budget Entry Portal Screen: Table of Contents We have organized forms into “like” types of data for all of the cost centers for which someone is responsible
17. Budget Entry: Non-Salary Using Supporting Detail, users can annotate a particular entry or build up a calculation such as cost per person times number of people Data can be exported to Excel Using Cell Text to make notes
18. Budget Entry: Salary Percent Distribution Salaries are calculated using $ times % charged to each cost center
19. Consolidation & Distribution The system has an organizational outline/hierarchy that facilitates drill-down and drill-up
22. Budget Analysis & Reporting using Hyperion: “slicing & dicing” Using the Point of View, users can change the data the report is looking at Related Content (“links”) let you drill down to lower levels of detail directly from this report
23.
24.
25. Rube Goldberg’s Pencil Sharpener Open window (A) and fly kite (B) . String (C) lifts small door (D) allowing moths (E) to escape and eat red flannel shirt (F) . As weight of shirt becomes less, shoe (G) steps on switch (H) which heats electric iron (I) and burns hole in pants (J) . Smoke (K) enters hole in tree (L) , smoking out opossum (M) which jumps into basket (N) , pulling rope (O) and lifting cage (P) , allowing woodpecker (Q) to chew wood from pencil (R) , exposing lead. Emergency knife (S) is always handy in case opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can't work
26. Previous Variance Analysis Process Data Warehouse Hyperion (Budgets) Oracle (Actuals) Star Schema Star Schema DSS Bus Objects Collection Bus Objects Query Excel Visual Basic Macro Variance Report Spreadsheets Analysis by Units Units emailed Excel SS to UBO UBO reviewed each SS and then loaded into Hyperion
27. The budget monitoring process using Hyperion Hyperion BI+ / Business Objects Since Hyperion will only hold data at a certain level of detail, transactional reporting environment provides queries for analysis when more detail is needed Analysis by Units Hyperion Oracle (Actuals) EDW Units enter their analysis/forecasts into Hyperion UBO enters “top-down” forecast/budget into Hyperion Budget, Variance, & Reforecast Reports (printed & on-line) Ad-hoc analysis & reporting
38. Reports to aid in reforecasting “ Run-rate” Report: How much of last year’s total expense did the first 4 months represent? The user can use this to help project out the current year.
After we chose Hyperion’s web-based budgeting solution, there were several design considerations that were at the forefront in our implementation: Adequately addressing Security issues, both in terms of user access to data, and security of the system itself. Because we have complex position budgeting as part of our process, we needed to address allowing people to see salary budget data for individuals in their department that was not charged to their department, but not to be able to see other budget data outside their department. And we needed to do this with a minimum amount of effort in designing and maintaining the forms we were developing. As mentioned before, the sheer volume of both metadata and data had to be addressed. Signification design work went into balancing the volume of data in the system with the performance of the system. It was important that we would be able to calculate the databases in a minimum amount of time, and that the perceived speed of the system to the users accessing it would be fast. As well, many universities have a technological infrastructure that differs from that normally encountered in the corporate environment. Without a traditional firewall around the entire campus, there were specific security and access issues that we needed to work with Hyperion on.
These next 4 slides are screen shots of the data entry tool (Planning), to give a sense of how the tool looks and works. This is the main “portal”, the table of contents. A user’s security controls not only access to specific data entry forms, but also the data that gets filtered upon opening the form. The number, organization, and definition of the forms is configured by analysts in our office. We chose to group “like” kinds of data in separate forms as a way of methodizing the budget formulation process. So, for example, a user would click on the Non-Salary data entry form to budget for non-salary expenses for each cost center for which they have responsibility.
This data entry form shows the “excel-like” feel of the tool. Data is stored monthly, but can be entered yearly (or quarterly), spreading automatically across the time periods. The rows show the natural classifications (expenditure and revenue types) defined for the form; although the database structure has all the natural classifications in our chart of accounts, we have chosen the specific codes to which we want people budgeting. The “Page” view displays the cost center being budgeted to; the value set in this list is controlled by the user’s security access. Data from the form can be exported to (or copied from) Excel, and there are a number of different ways of annotating or listing detail on budget entries.
Users then indicate the fraction of the salary that is to be charged to a specific cost center; that is 1.0 for 100%, 0.5 for 50%, and so on. Business Rules (calculations) are run several times a day to distribute the appropriate amount of budget to each cost center
The following three screen shots show the flexibility in cross-tab reporting, and in comparing different scenarios side by side. Here we show the University’s Consolidated Budget, with revenue, transfer, and expense categories in the rows and groupings of funds into fund types in the columns. You will note that this report is fully formatted for presentation purposes, and can be displayed either in HTML or PDF formats. There also is functionality to export the report data (unformatted) to Excel.
In this report, we have revenue, transfer, and expense categories in the rows, but instead we have put the award groupings in the page view. Instead in the columns we have different scenarios; for example, we have the Forecast (a high level early budget), the detailed budget that was entered a few months later, the reprojection of the fiscal year based on six months of data, and the next year’s high level forecast. In a way, this gives you a temporal view of how you thought things were going at different times in the budget and forecasting process. You would change the page view to see this data for each individual fund grouping. A PDF report would actually be generated cycling through all the values in the page view.
And here, we show a report that only has expenses, but it lists them by budget unit and by fund type. Users can change the data on the report – say from expenses to revenues – by using the Point of View. As you can see, there is great flexibility in the definition of reports.
So what have we achieved? Using Hyperion, we have a web-based budget formulation and reporting system that is accessible via the web, but which is sufficiently centralized so we have control over the integrity of the metadata plus real-time access to the budget data to see where people are all throughout the process. We have a dynamic reporting and analytical environment which addresses our needs both for internal and for external reporting. Although we have also inherited a more complex system that needs IT support to maintain, we no longer have to spend any real time going out to each user’s machine to make sure the software is properly installed and functioning. And now I turn it over to Geoffrey.
So what have we achieved? Using Hyperion, we have a web-based budget formulation and reporting system that is accessible via the web, but which is sufficiently centralized so we have control over the integrity of the metadata plus real-time access to the budget data to see where people are all throughout the process. We have a dynamic reporting and analytical environment which addresses our needs both for internal and for external reporting. Although we have also inherited a more complex system that needs IT support to maintain, we no longer have to spend any real time going out to each user’s machine to make sure the software is properly installed and functioning. And now I turn it over to Geoffrey.
So what have we achieved? Using Hyperion, we have a web-based budget formulation and reporting system that is accessible via the web, but which is sufficiently centralized so we have control over the integrity of the metadata plus real-time access to the budget data to see where people are all throughout the process. We have a dynamic reporting and analytical environment which addresses our needs both for internal and for external reporting. Although we have also inherited a more complex system that needs IT support to maintain, we no longer have to spend any real time going out to each user’s machine to make sure the software is properly installed and functioning. And now I turn it over to Geoffrey.