BAVIS - the BADENIA EIS. Christian Horning, BADENIA Bausparkasse AG

Transcription

1 f BAVIS - the BADENIA EIS Christian Horning, BADENIA Bausparkasse AG 1 Introduction 11 Overview In the following I would like to introduce to you, how the BAOENIA Bauspar kasse AG from Karlsruhe in Germany establishes its EIS with the SAS System Here I would like to, above all, deal with conceptual i,sues, I will describe the reasons which resulted in,etting up the EIS and point out the questions essential from my point of view which must be answered in order to be able to successfully carry out such a project Not least, the experiences made at the BADENIA and some sections from the current version of the BADENIA EIS will be presented 12 BADENIA The BADENIA Bausparkasse AG is the fourth largest private building and loan association in Germany The company's objective is to offer our customers the possibility to use cost-saving building loans This service is offered after the customer has saved a minimum credit to a savings contract over a minimum waiting period " In order to sell our products around the savings contract, we established a farreaching sales network It includes a uniqe external staff, the partner companies from the Aachener and MQnchener combine, to which the BADENIA Bausparkasse AG belongs, and many independent financial brokers 13 Corporate Planning Corporate Planning I am responsible for is an independent section of the BADENIA It is directly subordinate to the President The main tasks lie in the preparation of the data relevant for business planning for the management A total controlling of the most important control factors oriented by the business objectives also belongs here For that purpose the entire reporting should be oriented within a new integrated information management 2 Reasons for establishing BAVIS The necessity to get a comprehensive information management is the crucial basis for establishing the BADENIA executive information system BAVIS In addition, the inadequacies in the existing reporting systems, above all; are the reasons for establishing BAVIS In the case, the lacks often are not due to missing information but to an inappropriate processing The evaluations are mostly point of time-related, trends are not perceptible directly and no graphs are plotted Particularly there is no possibility, however, to limit oneself to the special within the flood of information of the many producing sales units To be able to deal with this task, the central questions on the objectives, the functionality and the organisational and technical aspects must be answered by BAVIS first " 1 _"' ' "_: "J--:_-:_':_':_ " ,, ; :;:_ -" -, "' - - -,,", _"_,<_',

2 -_ - - _-_,-_" J' " ,' -, - -,- -'--'-::-- '-'>':'::--,: 3 Objectives 31 Fields of application All user groups (see picture) should be supplied with information in a proper way according to their requirements c:a= 1 u ACI User groups Fields of application, f" rganisation I other L- --' executive board ' ' ' controlling "' ' corpora e planning marketing service As an executive information system, the first user group is, of course, the executive board In addition, all controlling functions, from corporate planning via sales management to definite service groups are possible as users Particularly for supporting controlling functions, EIS can perform a valuable contribution Especially here, the timely recognition of developments and the releasing of corresponding measures is important Especially here, a contemporary profit control must be possible It is particularly important for the corporate planning that, in addition to the establishing of the new information system, the old reporting must be further maintained until its entire information volume can be finally covered by BAVIS A further objective is to support the sales organisation with contemporary and controlling-relevant information This point is important to mention since it has crucial influence on the current state and data volume The aspect that an information system must be developed with which the information required in each case must be provided via several hierarchy levels is especially meaningful 32 Configuration levels In Order to get comprehensible implementation steps which can thus be handled, the overall project was divided into individual sub-projects By doing so, we adapted to the information requirement and the underlying data The data and the required data access methods are of crucial importance for the system se- 197

3 lection and the functionality and the ability to be expanded striven for Therefore, we have defined the following levels data oriented, considering the interfaces of a reporting system to be detached: - sales quantity - cross selling - turnover - supplies - sales quality - competition - marketing That data is provided within the overall system for the simulation of the business development, also belongs to the configuration leveiisupplies" The simulated results will form the scale for the overall planning of the business development of the budgeted balancing and Plan-P&L and will also enable an improvement of liquidity planning and profitability planning Especially for the analysis of stock development according to certain customer levels, we expect good possible use of the tool SAS First steps for this have already been taken You can see from this that the use of SAS and, in particular, the establishment of BAVIS is part of a strategy set up on a long-term basis for the development of the production factor information 4 Functionality High demands on the functionality of BAVIS are derived from the described requests and objectives The selection and the aggregation of data meeting the needs of the user are focused on Both are a crucial means to check the flood of information The required functionality is expressed in the following demands: user group-specific functionality - multi-dimensional views - representation of trends - drill down traffic lighting - graphic user interface easy operation and intuitive learn ability Particularly the easy operation and learn ability are very important with the difference of the user groups The top management, for example, will only accept an information system if it can be handled without great effort since there is already no time for an extensive training phase Also, a too complex user guidance should not be an obstacle to the demands of an occasional spontaneous use 198

4 For a picture of BAVIS main screen see above The top shows which data are selcted On the left you find units to drill down, on the right the corresponding data in the course of time : ]: ': '/" j-" ' ),' : ', ;;, ij :' L - ' " ' \ \ \, 5 Organisational Aspects Essential organisational element to guarantee the success of the comprehensive structure of BAVIS - only to be achieved undoubtedly on a long-term basis - is the procedure according to projectmanagement For this purpose, a unique project team under the supervision of corporate planning was established at the BADENIA Further project members are an employee of the application development, a permanent external adviser and changing advisers for the direct support during the implementation In corporate planning, BAVIS is developed independently and in own responsibility This includes creating the program, determining the interfaces as well as defining, establishing and describing the strategic data base Corporate planning occupies the role of the specialist promoter who forces the project and drives i't forward out of own interest In addition, the position of the power promoter indispensable required is decisive for the success of the project Considering the volume of the project and the great number of the required interfaces, in doubt an agreement must be brought about through him Here department limits should also be no problem For the BADENIA, the chairperson of the executive board directly occupies this roll How important the roll of the power promoter is, becomes especially clear' when the demands on information requirements, the used terms, the codes to be represented and finally the layout of the information presentation are deter- ' 199

5 mined Thanks to the good support, our required' quantities could be fixed early According to the current status of the project and the experiences available to us, I attach such great importance to the support through the management and the kind of co-operation that the success of the project is to be questioned without them A further organisational aspect are the evolved numbering systems which are sufficient for the operational range are, but which, however, often do not suffice for a systematic total view of data Here new structures must be established, if necessary Also important for us was the taking over of data from past production periods from a predecessor reporting system Considerable efforts had to be invested here The defining arguments did not correspond and had to be adapted with tremendous exertion 6 Technical Aspects From a technical point of view, EIS topic focuses on the availability and the processing of the strategic data The comprehensive functionality of SAS in this area was of decisive importance when selecting the system We require the following accesses to: - mainframe data in different organisational forms: - precisely defined interface files - Adabas database - VSAM-files - PC data in different organisational forms The enumeration also shows that a data access is absolutely necessary beyond system platforms The integration of internal and external data can be ensured especially through this Furthermore, the ability to exceed system limits enables the use of the system in heterogeneous system environments It is precisely this course we followed by processing the data on the platform best suited for this purpose That is, the daily processing of the interface records from the operational range occurs on the large-scale computer, including the lists to be produced On The first configuration level, an extract of this data is then downloaded into the executive board network The extract contains the data required most frequently This way, all essential information can be used, regardless of the present load of the mainframe In addition, the PC thus is available as efficient and, above all, convenient front-end For this configuration, it is not important whether the users are connected locally or remote As a result, it is possible to also ensure the connection of external sales partners 200

6 ]: Since, however, you cannot presuppose an infrastructure with networking connection for all of our company-internal users, we principally assume that the used data structures and the programs written for evaluating pn all platforms are identical and executable The individual user groups merely differ with respect for the function scope and with respect to the available data section This way, our users can use BAVIS directly on the mainframe, via single pes, via a net or via external connection IAI auaprk AG Setting up of strategic data : For the setting up of the strategic data stock (see picture), interface records are produced from the operational methods The interface records are processed overnight in a certain rotation in batch runs depending on necessity The enlargement by certain features and the compressing according to our data views belong to the processing Following data preparation, the automatic making out of the standard reports take place 201

7 The shown areas presuppose a comprehensive integration of BAVIS into the entire data processing architecture Integration refers to: - the establishment of a business model - definition of special terms - access to operational and strategic data bases - the definition of interfaces and transferring methods - the integration into operational batch processes with restart procedures - the establishment of the required infrastructure 7 Performance Spectrum The performance capacity of BAVIS is identified, above all, by the extent and the diversity of the displayed structures 60,000 smallest units are displayed in the sales structures These units are required in an internal and an external viewpoint The diagram of their structures is added as a service for certain sales partners Furthermore, the production capacity of the sales units for more than 500 smallest regional areas including all European states can be displayed Products are stored in a separate structure tree Time is displayed in the units day, month and year All described dimensions are stored for different business transactions The performance spectrum in the overview: - several business transactions per sold product in the dimensions: marketing unit - region - time - good response times, for 60;000 marketing units structures can be defined freely with as many hierarchy levels as desired - up-to-date safe of audit graphic surface - manager keyboard relatively independentof evolved numbering systems 8 Experiences The experiences the BADENIA Bausparkasse AG made lead to the conclusion that such a large project has some special risk factors on which the project success depends considerably The essential ones are: - new technology - right promoter - current state of data - degree of detailsl data quality critical users - extent to which predecessor systems are replaced As already indicated above, the integration of the required data bases is of central importance The definition of an own strategically oriented data base is necessary Usually, these stock becomes larger than the operational ones Due to the exponentially growing volumes of data, the incorporation of additional features and data dimensions requires a thorough foresighted analysis In 202 r ; " ::, ",, ',;" - "'',: - J :_ -

8 l: {' { 5::' doubt, data should indeed be stored in the interfaces, but should only be evaluated when actually required The data capacities force an efficient infrastructure to be supplied - the data processing architecture must be correct In the course of the acceptance and the examination of interface data of the operational area, defects and lacks of operational methods also become visible This is shown with the example of the evolved numbering systems which suffice for the operational concerns, but which are sometimes not sufficient for the strategic question formulations Additional necessities for the tuning and the correction in the operational area arise 9 Summary One can summarise that the establishment of an EIS is a process planned ona long-term basis which requires a comprehensive arrangement of the entire information management Here the infrastructure of data processing of a business is of crucial importance in addition to the choice of the correct basis system The BADENIA Bausparkasse AG made the right decision with the SAS System ", : )'" l', ( f v : l :' ;", ;,,', BADENIA Bausparkasse AG Leiter Unternehmensplanung Christian Horning KarlstraBe Karlsruhe 1 Tel: SAS is a registered trademark of SAS Institute Inc Cary, NC, USA i-: ' : ; " '\ I \ f: " o 203 )