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Assignment Title: “Proposal for a Business Intelligence Initiative for WCMT Campus –Sri Lanka”

By Lionel R. Amarakoon; Masters in info mgt (Sri Lanka); FLA(S.L.); MITD(Sri Lanka);

PGD in IR (BCIS); FIInF (IIS); Dip in HRD (India)

Aims and objectives of this paper are to suggest a suitable business intelligence (B.I.)framework for WCMT Campus Sri Lanka, identify business intelligence components, anddraw the complete architectural diagram and to explain the proposed model for the WCMTCampus and explain how the proposed model can overcome existing bottlenecks and issuesit faces currently.

It will suggest a high‐level overview of why BI is needed, what are the benefits will be and a

proposal for how the WCMT Campus should pursue such a transformation, in order toaddress the issues faced by the Campus.

Let us begin with defining “What Business Intelligence” is? “Business Intelligence is gettingquality information into the right people’s hands in a format that allows them to understandthe data quickly so they can act on it”.

Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad category of skills, technologies, applications and

practices that enhance the use of information for better decision‐making. In an era of

increasing competition and demands on the University, the need for relevant information hasnever been greater.

The emerging generation of BI tools and technologies support previously unattainable levelsof measurement, comparison and institutional interventions to improve core businessesprocesses and outcomes. The implementation of BI is an opportunity for any academic

institution to empower decision‐makers at all levels, move to a more proactive utilization of

information, and fundamentally change the way organization operates.

Business Intelligence is becoming vital for many organizations, especially those haveextremely large amount of data such as WCMT Campus. Decision makers depend ondetailed and accurate information when they have to make decisions. BI can providedecision makers with such accurate information, and with the appropriate tools for dataanalysis.

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BI is an umbrella term that combines architectures, tools, data bases, applications, practices,and methodologies (Turban, 2007; Cody, n.d.). Gartner Group (1996) (the first companyused BI in marker in the mid-1990) defined BI as “information and applications availablebroadly to employees, consultants, customers, suppliers, and the public.

The key to thriving in a competitive marketplace is staying ahead of the competition. Makingsound business decisions based on accurate and current information takes more thanintuition. Data analysis, reporting, and query tools can help business users dig in the mine ofdata to extract and/or synthesize valuable information/knowledge from it – today these toolscollectively fall into category called Business Intelligence” (Gartner Group, 1996)

Modern day enterprises rely on large amounts of data. The handling and conversion of thishuge amount of data to knowledge is a highly critical job. In order to convert this data intoknowledge and employing the knowledge to make wise decisions involves a combination oftechnologies and techniques like data warehousing, on-line analysis processing (OLAP)technologies, data mining and other tools.

All of these technologies are coupled together to be called Business Intelligence. Theproposed framework for user application to BI framework makes simpler the process of datamapping, validating, and loading based on customer profile. The proposed framework helpsin reducing time of data mapping, validating, and loading. It is also helpful for software BIvendors to increase customer base and strengthen relations with their customers. We alsoidentified that there is no single solution available to fulfil all the requirements for on-demandbusiness intelligence solution. This research follows Ralph Kimball who is considered aspioneers of data warehousing and Business Intelligence. It is considered worth to discusssome important terms related to BI before proceeding to upcoming sections.

Business Intelligence

There are many professional definitions of BI exist nevertheless none of them is a standard.“Business Intelligence is a term that refers to collecting, structuring, analysing and leveragingof data to turn it into easy-to-understand information. The term dates back to October 1958stated in an IBM Journal article by Hans Peter Luhn titled “A Business Intelligence System[2].” Another definition is “Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of applications andtechnologies for gathering, storing, analysing, and providing access to data to helpenterprise users make better business decisions [3]. The goal of BI is to help decision-makers make more informed and better decisions to guide their business.BI Terms

There are numerous BI terms uses in the market such as operational databases, OLTP,Data warehouse, data mart, OLAP and OLAP Server, Drill down/up, ad-hoc query andanalysis, dimension, Fact/Measure, KPI, dashboard, and scorecard [4]-[7].

BI Tools

Business intelligence tools are a type of application software designed to report, analyse andpresent data. The tools generally read data that have been previously stored, often, though

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not necessarily, in a data warehouse or data mart [8]. Business intelligence tools can bebroken down into three categories: 1) Query and reporting; 2) Online analytical processing(OLAP); and 3) Information mining [5]. There are numerous BI tools exist in the market forinstance 1) SAP Business Objects; 2) IBM Cognos; 3) ProClarity; 4) and QlikView [9]-[12].

This is the space for us to look into the analysis of the current situation at WCMT Campuswith regard to its data and information management techniques which leads to BusinessIntelligence.

“Data and information are the life blood of the 21st century economy. In theInformation Age, data is recognized as a vital enterprise asset” (DAMA, 2009)

“Organizations that do not understand the overwhelming importance of managingdata and information as tangible assets in the new economy will not survive” – TomPeters - 2001

According to (DANA, 2009) Money and people have long been considered to be enterpriseassets. Assets are resources with recognized value under the control of an individual ororganization. Enterprise assets help achieve the goals of the enterprise, and therefore needto be thoughtfully managed. The capture and use of such assets are carefully controlled, andinvestments in these assets are effectively leveraged to achieve enterprise objectives.

Data, and the information created from data, are now widely recognized as enterprise assets.

No enterprise can be effective without high quality data. Today's organizations rely on theirdata assets to make more informed and more effective decisions. Market leaders areleveraging their data assets by creating competitive advantages through greater knowledgeof their customers, innovative uses of information, and operational efficiencies. Businessesare using data to provide better products and services, cut costs, and control risks.Government agencies, educational institutions, and not-for-profit organizations also needhigh quality data to guide their operational, tactical, and strategic activities. As organizationsneed and increasingly depend on data, the business value of data assets can be moreclearly established.

The amount of data available in the world is growing at an astounding rate. Researchers atthe University of California at Berkeley estimate that the world produces between 1 and 2billion bytes of data annually. It often seems we are drowning in information.

Yet for many important decisions, we experience information gaps – the difference betweenwhat we know and what we need to know to make an effective decision. Information gapsrepresent enterprise liabilities with potentially profound impacts on operational effectivenessand profitability.

Every enterprise needs to effectively manage its increasingly important data and informationresources. Through a partnership of business leadership and technical expertise, the datamanagement function can effectively provide and control data and information assets.

Data is the representation of facts as text, numbers, graphics, images, sound or video.Technically, data is the plural form of the word Latin word datum, meaning "a fact." However,

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people commonly use the term as a singular thing. Facts are captured, stored, andexpressed as data.

Let us now make an analysis to see how best WCMT has considered data and informationwhich is recognized as a vital enterprise asset in the Information Age.

Profile of WCMT Campus

WCMT Campus is the Sri Lankan Academic Centre for the University of Bolton (UOB), UK. Itfollows a unique system of academic delivery with a Flying Faculty from the UK Campus.Students at WCMT have a range of the university's undergraduate and postgraduateprogrammes to choose from in Business, Computing and Engineering. Recognised by theUGC, Sri Lanka and is a Member of International Association of Universities.

WCMT Campus, is a BOI Approved venture, and is a part of the KES Group of Institutions,which is a global education group, with significant experience in delivering transnationaleducation across India, UAE, and now in Sri Lanka. Moreover, KES Group’s presence isrenowned world over because of their unique online interactive teaching platform ‘Boltonline’which is in high demand at present.

The qualifications awarded at WCMT Campus are identical to those awarded at theUniversity of Bolton, UK and the students will receive the certificates directly from the parentcampus; that too at a fraction of the cost.

Students studying on UOB programmes at WCMT can choose to either complete their entireprogramme in Sri Lanka or transfer to the UOB campuses in the UAE or UK.

Vision: "WCMT Campus aspires to pioneer in transnational undergraduate, postgraduateand PhD education in Sri Lanka, chosen for its affordability well reputed for its reliability andrenowned for its academic quality.”

Mission: "WCMT Campus' Mission is to collaborate with well reputed internationaluniversities to offer highly accredited, career oriented undergraduate, postgraduate and PhDprogrammes within an intellectually and technically equipped campus to facilitate students tograduate with transnational degrees in Sri Lanka at a fraction of the cost.

Facilities:

Library

Fully equipped Computer Lab with multimedia

Laboratories

Air conditioned comfortable Class Rooms with latest teaching aids

Wi-Fi Zone

Cafeteria

Discussion Rooms

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Car Park with Ample space

Current Scenario of Data and Information Management at WCMT and BI

As a leading foreign university operating in Sri Lanka, the WCMT Campus’ “Data andInformation Management System” should facilitate Campus transformation aimed atimproving the quality of education by leveraging the benefits of the system in learning,administration and collaboration in the Campus. It should bring infrastructure, solutions andservices; to the said Campus, teaching faculty, students and parents. It should haveembraced the varied needs of administration, staff, teaching faculty, parents and students ofthe Campus. Centralized Administration of the Campus through the data and informationmanagement system should able to smoothly facilitate the following aspects (Lists of sourcedata) of the Campus (WCMT, 2013):

Access management, Student admission, Fees management, Attendance, Progress card,Certificate management, Examination management, Assessment, Library management,Event management, Transport management, Health/Nursing, Discipline/attainments, Resultanalytics, Feedback and Archive.

A typical scenario exists at WCMT; almost all the above source data lists (under a BI systemthey become “Source Data” are maintained manually and available as hard copies in files.On the other hand, proper information governance is lacking in WCMT. That means theapplication of formal and informal control to ensure information is managed in accordancewith the WCMT’s legal and operational requirements. Yet another aspect of this is morethan policies and procedures, governance is a culture of accountability to which WCMTemployees at all level must be committed. If that is lacking best technology available atWCMT and the well-considered guidelines will mean little, and operational standardizationand compliance both will go out of the window of WCMT.

Although WCMT maintains a Webpage which acts as a web Portal where part of the sourcedata are also can be access by WCMT Customers (Higher Education Students) and staffaccording to an evaluation done by the author using “Google Analytic” tool hardly any targetaudience have view the website at all.

Apart from the Library and the Finance Division of the Campus Data and InformationManagement of the above mentioned key areas of the Campus are done manually. All stakeholders find it difficult to take timely decisions as and when the Campus authorities neededto take immediate actions for the smooth functioning of the Academic programs. Manydelays and dissatisfaction on the part of customer (students) frequently occur. This situationcertainly affects the academic program of the WCMT. The present student are the de facto“Reference Markets” for future students to be attracted to WCMT products (variousundergraduate and post-graduate programs offer at WCMT). If they face difficult situations atWCMT they will sure not act as reference markets for our future programs.

The Campus Library manages a fully automated integrated library system with the use ofCDS/ISIS Library Software developed by the UNESCO.

CDS/ISIS is an integrated set of information systems designed for library automation. Itcovers all major library operations such as; acquisition, cataloguing, circulation, serials

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control and current awareness (related data are managed online). In addition to thesemodules on OPAC and WEB are also included.

WCMT Online Integrated Library Management System integrates seven modules, namelyAcquisition, Cataloguing, Circulation, Serial Control, Current Awareness and Open PublicAccess Control module. All data related to these modules are available online. Thedatabase helps WCMT to organize library related information by analysing huge quantities oflibrary related data and looking for patterns, trends, associations, exceptions, and changesin data too complicated for normal human detection.

WCMT Financial Data Management System

The WCMT Finance System has organized its finances all in one central place and can beaccessed from anywhere at any time for the authorized persons such as the CEO, OfficeManager, Accountant, Chairman who is based in Dubai and the Group HR Manager basedin Bombay.

Tasks are organized by group, like Vendors, Customers, and Banking in the system. WCMTFinance Unit can import contacts from Excel or other email address books into the system.

End users can get to the features they need fast with user-friendly navigation. Thecustomizable tool bar provides access to open windows and most common tasks. Invoices,Estimates, Sales Receipts, and other forms have simple layouts for easy use. The Systemalso facilitate easily create invoices and track sales & expenses. Create invoices quickly andsave time tracking your sales, bills, and expenses.

QuickBooks, the software used by Finance Unit, organizes everything in one place, soWCMT can access all past invoices, payments, and bills with just a few clicks. Beauty of thesystem is that it can get reliable records for tax time.

It means gaining insights into WCMT business and prepares for tax season with one-clicktax reports. Drill down to see the details behind the numbers, and export your reports and allof your QuickBooks formatting to Excel.

Manage customer, vendor, and employee data simultaneously. Use the Customer, Vendor,and Employee Centres to manage key data easily. The Customer Centre, for example, givesyou a single place to edit a customer's billing address, company name, phone number andmore, and gives you quick access to related transactions.

Get a consolidated view of your business with Company Snapshot. Stay on top of yourbusiness by customizing your Company Snapshot. See at a glance year-over-year incomeand expense trends, along with details, and top customers. Go paperless with onlinebanking - Securely download bank and credit transactions directly into QuickBooks.

One major problem associate with “Financial Data Management System at WCMT” isLibrarian cannot access the Library Students payment data such as who had paid the“Refundable Library Deposit of Rs.10,000.00” in order to obtain the membership of the

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WCMT Library and also payment of over-due books fines or fines for lost books borrowed bystudents. Non availability of access to students’ payments in relation to library requirementfor WCMT Librarian there is delays in obtaining the library membership and also reinstatingthe library membership for those who had made the payment of library fines to the financeunit. Hence, access to student payment details in the financial data management systemshould be available to the librarian.

Presently at WCMT vast quantities of emails are held in inboxes, sent folders and deleteditem folders etc. This has put the WCMT at risk and adversely impact the performance ofemail servers in the organization. Email servers never designed to act as repositories forsuch great quantities of emails and move control of this information away from theorganization. Without the management of emails, it is difficult for organizations to meet theirlegal preservation requirements in the event of litigation and government investigations,increasing the effort and cost in responding to e-discovery and disclosure. This situation hasto be rectified as early as possible.

There are five types of “Source Data available at WCMT, which is an academic centre in SriLanka representing a UK University namely, “University of Bolton”.

(1)Unstructured Data – This is data found in e-mail, journal articles, and Web portals,product

Specifications, marketing collateral, PDF files and Excel Files etc.

(2)Transactional Data – This is data related to sales, deliveries, invoices, and claims andother

monetary and non-monetary interactions.

(3) Metadata – This is data about other data and may reside in a formal repository or in otherforms such as XML documents, report definitions, column descriptions in a database, logfiles, connections and configuration files.

(4) Hierarchical – Hierarchical data stores the relationships between other data. It may bestored as part of an accounting system or separately as descriptions of real-worldrelationships, such as organizational structure or academic program.

(5) Master – Master data/Source Data are the critical nouns of a business and fall generallyonto four groupings:

"People", "Things", "Places" and "Concepts". Further categorizations within thosegroupings are

called subject areas, domain areas, or entity types. As an example, within people, thereare

customer, employees and vendors; and within things, there are product, part, store, andasset.

Within concepts, there are, things like contact, warrantee and licenses, finally, withinplaces;

there are office locations and geographical divisions.

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Master Data is the critical business information supporting the transactional and analyticaloperations of an organization such as WCMT. Master Data Management (MDM) is acombination of applications and technologies that consolidates, cleans, and augments thiscorporate master data, and synchronizes it with all applications, business processes, andanalytical tools. This results in significant improvements in operational efficiency, reporting,and fact based decision-making.

The proposed WCMT Master Data Management System should consist of organization widepolicies and procedures, staff activities, in which these activities mentioned above, can besuccessfully utilized.

In order to successfully manage the master data MDM applications need to have thefollowing characteristics (Oracle, 2011), If WCMT data to get value in the context of BI:

-A flexible, extensible and open data model to hold the master data and all needed attributes(both structured and unstructured). In addition, the data model must be application neutral,yet support OLTP workloads and directly connected applications

-A metadata management capability for items such as business entity matrixes relationshipsand hierarchies

-A source system management capability to fully cross-reference business objects and tosatisfy seemingly conflicting data ownership requirements.

-A data quality function that can find and eliminate duplicate data while insuring correct dataattribute survivorship.

-A data quality interface to assist with preventing new errors from entering the system evenwhen data entry is outside the MDM application itself.

-A continuing data cleaning function to keep the data up to date.

-An internal triggering mechanism to create and deploy change information to all connectedsystems.

-A comprehensive data security system to control and monitor data access, update rights,and maintain change history.

-A user interface to support casual users and data stewards.

-A data migration management capability to insure consistency as data moves across thereal time enterprise.

-A business intelligence structure to support profiling, compliance and business performanceindicators.

-A single platform to manage all master data objectives in order to prevent the proliferation ofnew silos of information on top of the existing fragmentation problem.

-An analytical foundation for directly analysing master data.

-A highly available and scalable platform for mission critical data access under heavy mixedworkloads.

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WCMT’s business activities are slammed with unstructured content from electronic text.Social media content, emails, loan applications, service notes, warranty claims. This is 90%of all WCMT’s business data. Is WCMT taking full advantage of it all? There should be somemechanism to get insights from electronic text data regardless of format or location. It isadvisable to use a “Text Analytic” tool which uses sophisticated linguistic rules and statisticalmethods to evaluate text like a human mind would –minus the inconsistency and ambiguity.Such Text Analytic tool would automatically determine keywords and topics, categorizescontent, manages semantic terms, unearth sentiment and puts things in context. So theWCMT in a better position to interpret its customers’’ (students and teachers) opinions,improve products (academic programs), optimize services, streamline processes and makeproactive, fact-based decisions.

As pointed out in the beginning, Source Data, which are managed as a manual systemshould indeed be coupled with a BI Solution for WCMT to achieve its business goals.Earlier we mentioned that at WCMT typical scenario existed in relation to Data andInformation Management. As a leading foreign university operating in Sri Lanka, the WCMTCampus’s BI solution should facilitate Campus transformation aimed at improving the qualityof education by leveraging the benefits of the system in learning, administration andcollaboration in the Campus. It should bring infrastructure, solutions and services; to the saidCampus, teaching faculty, students and parents. It should have embraced the varied needsof administration, staff, teaching faculty, parents and students of the Campus. CentralizedAdministration of the Campus through the data and information management system shouldable to smoothly facilitate the following aspects (Lists of source data) of the Campus (WCMT,2013):

Access management, Student admission, Fees management, Attendance, Progresscard, Certificate management, Examination management, Assessment, Librarymanagement, Event management, Transport management, Health/Nursing,Discipline/attainments, Result analytics, Feedback and Archive.

A typical scenario exists at WCMT; almost all the above source data lists aremaintained manually and available as hard copies in files. On the other hand, properinformation governance is lacking in WCMT. That means the application of formal andinformal control to ensure information is managed in accordance with the WCMT’s legal andoperational requirements. Yet another aspect of this is more than policies and procedures,governance is a culture of accountability to which WCMT employees at all level must becommitted. If that is lacking best technology available at WCMT and the well-consideredguidelines will mean little, and operational standardization and compliance both will go out ofthe window of WCMT. Since a Decision Support System couple with BI capabilities notavailable at WCMT SMT find it difficult to take important business decisions on time willaffect even the day to day function of the Campus.

In the context of this typical scenario in source data management system at WCMT,let us discuss how this situation affects WCMT as a University Campus.

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Customer Relationship management (CRM) in this case Student relationship management(SRM) is a strategy under BI is for managing University interactions with customers (HigherEducations Students), clients, vendors, suppliers and sales prospects. It involves of makinguse of technology in order to organize, automate and synchronize business process prevailsin a University Campus such as WCMT. In the absence of a similar system there is aserious problem for WCMT to find, attract and win new audiences (clientele) and reduce thecost of marketing and student service. Hardly any effective marketing, customer (student)and technical support is available at WCMT due to non-availability of a BI Initiative. Goals ofStudent Relations Management (SRM) (SRM is a concept derived from CRM) are to improvethe students experiences, reduce drop-out rates of the campus, and also improve institutionsefficiency as an Higher Education Institution. The SRM involves automating andsynchronizing a number of different processes such as academic advice for students,counselling, and registration of students. In SRM the component of data warehouses (whichare a major tool of BI) have not been given though at WCMT. In the absence of a DataWarehouse at WCMT, data and information related to all assessments, examination results,payment details of students, class attendance of students, assignment submission etc., aremaintained in hard copies in manual filed which are locked in steel cabinets. These arehistorical data which is also the “Institutional Memory” of the WCMT. These manual datamanagement systems will not help WCMT getting quality information by the right people(such as CEO, COO, Academic Manager, Admin Manager and the Head of Finance) andalso in a format that allows them to understand and observe data quality so that they can acton it on time. Hence in the absence of a BI initiative at WCMT it has shown slow progresswith regard to student enrolments and there had been a significant number of drop outs fromthe campus. This is because currently this university campus is heavily dependent on themanually managed data structures to provide key data elements needed for operationalreporting, business decision making. Hence, the Campus is lacking in its ability to performanalysis across the functional areas both in a structured format as well as in an ad hocnature. Mired in decade old reporting practices, the university does not approach decisionmaking at a campus wide level, by defining key performance indicators to keep a pulse onthe state of affairs.

Instead, the decision making is pushed down to the lowest levels of each functionalarea, allowing decisions to be made that might best suit the functional area(differentdivisions of the WCMT) rather than the campus as a whole.

In order to overcome the aforesaid issues and bottlenecks prevailing at WCMTCampus let us come up with a suitable “Business Intelligence Framework for WCMTCampus”, at the same time identify the BI component of the framework, and look atthe expected benefits of the proposed solution.

It is important here to identify components of BI with brief descriptions of each of them.

BI Components

OLAP (On-line analytical processing)

It refers to the way in which business users can slice and dice their way through data usingsophisticated tools that allow for the navigation of dimensions such as time or hierarchies.Online Analytical Processing or OLAP provides multidimensional, summarized views of

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business data and is used for reporting, analysis, modelling and planning for optimizing thebusiness. OLAP techniques and tools can be used to work with data warehouses or datamarts designed for sophisticated enterprise intelligence systems. These systems processqueries required to discover trends and analyse critical factors. Reporting softwaregenerates aggregated views of data to keep the management informed about the state oftheir business.

Advanced Analytics

it is referred to as data mining, forecasting or predictive analytics, this takes advantage ofstatistical analysis techniques to predict or provide certainty measures on facts.

Corporate Performance Management (Portals,Scorecards, Dashboards)

This general category usually provides a container for several pieces to plug into so that theaggregate tells a story. For example, a balanced scorecard that displays port lets forfinancial metrics combined with say organizational learning and growth metrics.

Real time BI

It allows for the real time distribution of metrics through email, messaging systems and/orinteractive displays.

Data Warehouse and data marts

The data warehouse is the significant component of business intelligence. It is subjectoriented, integrated. The data warehouse supports the physical propagation of data byhandling the numerous enterprise records for integration, cleansing, aggregation and querytasks. It can also contain the operational data which can be defined as an updateable setof integrated data used for enterprise wide tactical decision-making of a particular subjectarea. It contains live data, not snapshots, and retains minimal history. Data sources can beoperational databases, historical data, external data for example, from market researchcompanies or from the Internet), or information from the already existing data warehouseenvironment. The data sources can be relational databases or any other data structure thatsupports the line of business applications.

Data Sources

Data sources can be operational databases, historical data, external data for example, frommarket research companies or from the Internet), or information from the already existingdata warehouse environment. The data sources can be relational databases or any otherdata structure that supports the line of business applications.

They also can reside on many different platforms and can contain structured information,such as tables or spread sheets, or unstructured information, such as plaintext files orpictures and other multimedia information.

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Proposed BI Model for WCMT

Description of the BI Model Framework for WCMT

The framework depicts clearly the flow of activities of the proposed WCMT BI Modelexpected to be in action. It is absolutely necessary to build a BI Framework and strategythat aligns with the business goals of the WCMT Campus, which will improves knowledgemanage, advances business by making the best use of information and enables BI

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penetration into the business proses and helps WCMT enterprise with strategic, tactical, andoperational decision making.

As most of the WCMT Campus information systems were provided from different sources,there was an urgent need to integrate data from all these sources into one data warehousein a manner that could help the campus in making use of all data to assure quality. The datato be gathered in order to produce the campus BI solution and help in enhancing educationquality are:

(1) Source Systems/Data

•WCMT Academic Data (Registration, examinations, Assignments, Assessments, enrolment,

Etc.).

•WCMT Financial Data (Student fees, staff salaries, orders, sales, etc.).

•WCMT Human Resources Data (Staff personal information).

•WCMT Quality Assurance Data (Student feedback, GPA differences, drop-out ratio, plancompletion, Industry feedback, etc.).

•WCMT Library Data (Acquisition, Cataloguing, Circulation, Serial Control, CurrentAwareness information)

An enterprise data warehouse is needed to be built to hold all the previous data of WCMT.The data sources needed to be provided from different sources (Oracle databases, SQLServer data bases, excel). It is suggested that the WCMT Data Warehouse needs to be builtusing “Oracle 11g data base package”. The ETL supposed to be built by using ETL packagein “Oracle Warehouse Builder”.

(2) ELT Process of the proposed WCMT BI Solution

ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) is a process in data warehousing responsible for pullingdata out of the source systems and placing it into a data warehouse. ETL involves thefollowing tasks:

- Extracting the data from source systems (SAP, ERP, and other operational systems),data from different source systems is converted into one consolidated data warehouseformat which is ready for transformation processing.

- Transforming the data may involve the following tasks: applying business rules (so-called derivations, e.g., calculating new measures and dimensions), cleaning (e.g., mappingNULL to 0 or "Male" to "M" and "Female" to "F" etc.), filtering (e.g., selecting only certaincolumns to load), splitting a column into multiple columns and vice versa, joining togetherdata from multiple sources (e.g., lookup, merge), transposing rows and columns, applyingany kind of simple or complex data validation (e.g., if the first 3 columns in a row are emptythen reject the row from processing)

- Loading the data into a data warehouse or data repository/ other Reporting Applications.In other words in this stage pushes the transformed data and loads the WCMTG datawarehouse with data that are aggregated and filtered.

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(3) Data Warehouse

The electronic storage of a large amount of information by a business is called a Data warehouse. Warehoused data must be stored in a manner that is secure, reliable, easy to retrieveand easy to manage.

Businesses might warehouse data for use in exploration and data mining, looking forpatterns of information that will help them improve their businesses. A good datawarehousing system can also make it easier for different departments within a company toaccess each other's data. For example, a data warehouse might allow a company's CEO toeasily examine the sales team's data and help him to make decisions about how to improvesales or streamline the department. Effective data storage and management are also whatmake things like making travel reservations and using automated teller machines possible.

(3.1) Meta Data in WarehouseThe first image most people have of the data warehouse is a large collection of historical,integrated data. While that image is correct in many regards, there is another very importantelement of the data warehouse that is vital - metadata.

Metadata is data about data. Metadata has been around as long as there have beenprograms and data that the programs operate on. Figure 1 shows metadata in a simple form.While metadata is not new, the role of metadata and its importance in the face of the datawarehouse certainly is new. For years the information technology professional has worked inthe same environment as metadata, but in many ways has paid little attention to metadata.The information professional has spent a life dedicated to process and functional analysis,user requirements, maintenance, architectures, and the like. The role of metadata has beenpassive at best in this milieu.But metadata plays a very different role in data warehouse. Relegating metadata to abackwater, passive role in the data warehouse environment is to defeat the purpose of datawarehouse. Metadata plays a very active and important part in the data warehouseenvironment. The reason why metadata plays such an important and active role in the datawarehouse environment is apparent when contrasting the operational environment to thedata warehouse environment insofar as the user community is concerned.

(4) OLAP AnalysisOLAP allows user access, analysis and modelling of business problems andsharing of information that is stored in data warehouse. It offers techniquesfor data analysis and drilling data and the tools are mainly used for interactivereport generation. It use data mining techniques and statistical methods tocreate readable, fast report generation that is used for forecasting that canfurther assist in strategic decision-making. The beauty of this reports are theyare generated based on a CEO’s pre-defined criteria (dimensions).

Short for Online Analytical Processing, a category of software tools that providesanalysis of data stored in a database. OLAP tools enable users to analyse differentdimensions of multidimensional data. For example, it provides time series and trendanalysis views. OLAP often is used in data mining.

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The chief component of OLAP is the OLAP server, which sits between a client anddatabase management systems (DBMS). The OLAP server understands how data isorganized in the database and has special functions for analysing the data. There areOLAP servers available for nearly all the major database systems.

(5) Data MiningData mining techniques are designed to identify relationships and rules withina data warehouse, and then create a report of these relationships and rules.This process involves discovering various patterns, generalizations,regularities and rules in data resources. Knowledge from data mining may beused to predict an outcome of a decision and can also describe reality.Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is theprocess of analysing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into usefulinformation - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both.Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analysing data. Itallows users to analyse data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it,and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process offinding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.

(6) BI ReportingOne of the most common functions of business intelligence is reporting — so muchso that the terms are often used interchangeably. Reporting is really the presentationlayer of BI, or the interface between the data repositories and the decision-makers.As more employees in a company become responsible for decision-making, easyaccess to reporting and analysis has become paramount. Companies are movingbeyond the notion of static reports for a small subset of users, and opening reportingup to knowledge workers (the casual BI user).Reporting for some organizations such as WCMT Campus is akin to manuallymanipulating data in Excel spread sheets.

Different levels of the organization will utilize information for different purposes. At strategicand tactical levels, information provides input to senior managers; at the operational levels,information provides input to lower level managers.Data are the life blood of daily operations in an organization and BI takes that data andpresence it to decision makers in the form of information used at the operational level of anorganization to address the following specific actions:

1. Identify problems and ‘bottlenecks’.2. Provide analysis of ‘the best’ and ‘the worst’3. Provide analysis of products4. Provide analysis of employees5. Provide analysis of regions (using measurable metrics such as sales, costs or

quantifiable results)6. Perform ad-hoc analysis and answer questions related to department’s ongoing

operations, up to date financial standing and sales.

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Tactical level decisions – Decisions made at the tactical level are related to planning andrely on real-time data and forecasting to direct the future actions of marketing, sales, financeand capital management.Decision makers will make use of the information used at the tactical level to address thefollowing specific action:

1. Analysis of deviations from the realization of plans for particular organizational units,individuals or indicators.

2. Decisions related to the direction of marketing, sales, finance and capitalmanagement.

3. Forecasting of demand for a given product or service.

Strategic level decisions - Business intelligence systems provide information in support ofstrategic decision related to the development of future results based on historical results,profitability of offers and the effectiveness of distribution channels.

Decision makers will make use of the information used at the strategic level to address thefollowing specific action:

1. Whether to enter new markets.2. The possibility of changing a company’s orientation from product-centric to customer-

centric.3. The launch of a new product.4. What objectives to set and to follow through on the realization of such established

objectives.

Once the proposed WCMT BI initiative is in operation, this solution could provide university’stop management (Chairman, CEO, COO, Academic Manager, Marketing Manager, AdminManager and the Head of Finance) with reports to uncover trends in the students andlecturers’ performance in a manner that would be impossible or at least extremely tediouswithout data warehouses and data mining.

Many studies have indicated the importance of IT alignment with business strategy in orderto enhance corporate strategy (Fig. 1) Strategic Alignment Model developed by Hendersonand Venkatraman (1993) was one of the first models that described in an explicit way theinterrelationships between business strategies and IT strategies. This model was based intwo main concepts (Figure 2): Strategic fit that recognizes the need to position theorganization in an external marketplace where growth can take place, and functionalintegration which addresses how best structure internal systems to execute the businessstrategy of the organization.

Note: All the Figures 1 – 8 cited here and the related explanations are as explained byAlnoukari, (2009).

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Fig.1 – IT alignment with Business Strategy

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Fig.2 – Strategic Alignment Model

IT alignment is not simply formulating IT strategy to fit business strategy. It has to considerexternal forces and the environment uncertainty. Such alignment helps organizationsbecoming flexible organizations.

One of the main strategic goals of the WCMT Campus is to enhance students GPA like anyother higher education institute anywhere in the world.

Figure 3 shows the correlation between student’s accumulative GPA and their credit hours. Itshows that students with higher accumulative hours are getting higher accumulative GPA.On the other hand it is very clear that there is strong correlation between students’ level ofEnglish and accumulative GPA as shown in figure 4.

Clustering each faculty’s students according to their cumulative GPAs, and their completedhours helps the university’s academic advisors focus on special groups, especially the groupof students that are likely to drop out (Figure 5).

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Correlation between credit hours and AGPA changes shows a clear picture about theoptimal number of the credit hours the students would take to increase their AGPA.

Fig. 3 – Campus students clustered according to their accumulative GPA & theircredit hours

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Fig. 4 - Relationship between Campus students’ accumulative GPA & their Englishlevel

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Fig. 5 - Shows that this ranges between 2-12 and 20-22 hours

This provides the University Campus decision makers with the reasons to find out how tohelp students to enhance their AGPAs while getting the required credit hours in eachsemester (which varies between 16-19 hours).These results helped WCMT to update theireducation system in order to force students to enhance their English level by adding moreEnglish teaching hours at the early phases. WCMT BI solution is able to provide WCMTmanagers with a set of reports that can help them evaluating the university current strategy.WCMT BI solution’s reporting includes:

• Predicting students GPAs. Different algorithms will be used for prediction. Evaluation of theresults for each algorithm permits choosing the best method with the highest predictiveconfidence. SVA algorithm was chosen with more than 70% predictive confidence (Figure 6shows GPA prediction deviation errors).

This also helps predicting the average GPA per each faculty, which would help Campuspreparing plans to enhance the overall performance.

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Fig. 6 – GPA prediction deviation errors chart

• Market basket analysis report helps in preparing the time table for each semester. Theresultant time table would contain a set of highly interrelated courses that students require.This means that two courses with high association correlation don’t overlap in the time table,also these two courses should be enrolled in the same semester, and not wait for one or twosemesters. This analysis helps achieving one of the main WCMT strategic goals byenhancing the total number of enrolled courses (Figure 7). This has an immediate financialrevenue increase.

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Fig. 7 – University Courses (Current Enrolments)

• Analysis of the total number of students’ presence per different time ranges per days helpsWCMT achieving one of its strategic goals by enhancing services provided to its studentsand optimizing costs (Figure 8).

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Fig. 8 – Campus students’ attendance per different time ranges per days

Such analysis helps WCMT preparing the optimal plans for transportation, restaurants,library services, and others.

• Identifying students likely to drop out using the students predicted GPA results (Figure 6).

• Classifications of students’ results according to different subjects (Figure 4).

As explained earlier in this assignment, the use of BI solution in formulating, implementing,and achieving organization’s strategy is possible. This work can be extended by integratingknowledge management with BI solutions, as it can help deriving more

Business Intelligence (BI) reporting tool to be envisaged by SMT of WCMT

According to (Cody, F. [et al], nod), business intelligence and reporting tools (BIRT) hasgrown successfully since 2004. The successful of this growing technology is achieved whenthe user use the BIRT technology to produce reports in business environment. The BIRTreports allow user to recognize trends in data and present the report in interactive ways andmake the reports look professional.

The suggested BI reporting tools for WCMT can be categorized into two. The first category isreport development environment that can be used to design and develop the reports while

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report development environment which is similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver is functioningto design web pages.

This category is connected with the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). JDBC is used toconnect with the MySQL database to produce reports. The Structured Query Language(SQL) in MySQL consist of different statement such as select, delete, update and addingstatement.

The second category is Java APIs. It provides Java Server Report for integrating betweenBIRT Report Engine and Apache Tomcat (Body, A., 2005).

The graph to be generated by BI reporting tools will be used to produce the proposedstudents’ report. This report can be used to analyse the correlation of academic resultsbetween the students that stay in the hostel provided by the university (in-campus) andthose who are renting outside (out-campus accommodations).

Expected Benefits of the Proposed Solutions

General

In general “Business Intelligence” enables organizations such as WCMT to make wellinformed business decisions and thus can be the source of competitive advantages. This isespecially true when organizations are able to extrapolate information from indicators in theexternal environment and make accurate forecasts about future trends or economicconditions. Once business intelligence is gathered effectively and used proactively then theorganization can make decisions that benefit to them.

The ultimate objective of business intelligence is to improve the timeliness and quality ofinformation. Timely and good quality information is like having a crystal ball that can give anindication of what's the best course to take.

Business Intelligence reveals:

• The position of the organization as in comparison to its competitors.

• Changes in customer behaviour and spending patterns

• The capabilities of the organization

• Market conditions, future trends, demographic and economic information

• The social, regulatory, and political environment

• What the competitors in the market are doing

Businesses realize that in this very competitive, fast paced and ever-changing businessenvironment, a key competitive quantity is how quickly they respond and adapt to change.Business Intelligence enables them to use information gathered to quickly and constantlyrespond to changes.

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BI provides many benefits to organizations utilizing it. It can eliminate a lot of the guessworkwithin an organization, enhance communication among departments while coordinatingactivities, and enable organizations to respond quickly to changes in financial conditions,customer preferences, and supply chain operations. BI improves the overall performance ofthe organization using it.

Information is often regarded as the second most important resource a company has (acompany's most valuable assets are its people). So when a company can make decisionsbased on timely and accurate information, the company can improve its performance. BIalso expedites decision-making, as acting quickly and correctly on information beforecompeting businesses do can often result in competitively superior performance. It can alsoimprove customer experience, allowing for the timely and appropriate response to customerproblems and priorities.

How proposed BI initiative is expected to solve existing issues/bottlenecks specific toWCMT

Improve operational efficiency- Eliminate report backlog and delays- find root causesand take action – Negotiate better contracts with suppliers and customers(students)Identify resource waste and reduce inventory costs- Sell information tocustomers, partners ,and suppliers – Leverage WCMT’s investment in the ERP or thedata warehouse – Give users the means to make better decisions and Challengeassumptions with factual information.

Parents do not have an opportunity to monitor the progress of their children who arestudying at WCMT.In the absence of Master Data Management System with BI capability parents can’t observethe student behaviour at campus in relation to their attendance, academic progress, takehome assignments, class room assignments, discipline/attainments etc. If this BI solution willsupport a “Parental Portal’, which should be fully integrated into the system and available24/7 from work, home and school then parents will be connected with the WCMT GraduateSchool and informed of their children’s progress in the above mentioned areas. Need toprovide parents a password-secure access to their children’s progress.

The following areas coming under “Graduate School Central Administration” are manuallymaintained. Data and information related access management, student’s enrolments, feesmanagements, Examination management, assessments, Discipline/attainment, resultsanalytics, student feedback and archive. These are historic data and also the “InstitutionalMemory of WCMT Campus”. Since what WCMT maintains is a manual system related tosaid data, this exiting system will not help WCMT getting quality information by the rightpeople such as Chairman, Group CEO, COO, Group HR Manager, Academic Manager,Marketing Manager, Head of Finance, Librarian and Student Counsellors etc and also in aformat that allows them to understand and observe of quality data so that they can taketimely decisions which are vital to achieving the objectives of the campus. If the proposed BIcapability is in existence at WCMT the SMT of the WCMT will get right information on theright time and also in the right format facilitating them to take important decisions on time.

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WCMT SMT then can analyze huge quantities of above data and able to look for patterns,trends, associations, exceptions and changes in data that are too complicated for normalhuman detection is not possible. Therefore SMT of the WCMT will have better position totake timely decision.

It is also revealed that, in the absence of a BI initiative, the campus has shown slowprogress with regard to the student enrolments in the current year and there had been asignificant number drop outs from the campus. This situation arises because of the campusheavily dependent on a manually managed data structures and those structures are unableto provide key data elements needed for operational reporting, business decision making ontime. There is a serious lack of ability to perform an analysis across the functional areasboth in structured formats as well as ad-hoc nature. Thus SMT of the campus don’t haveaccess to reports to uncover trends in the students and lecturer’s performance in a mannerthat would be impossible or at least extremely tedious without the availability of a BI solutionwith a data-warehouse and data mining. If WCMT has BI reporting everything would havebetter for them. These bottlenecks and problems can be overcome easily.

IT alignment with business strategy in order to enhance corporate strategy is lacking here atWCMT. One of the main strategic goals of the WCMT campus is to enhance students GPA;in the absence of BI initiative WCMT cannot achieve this goal in an effective manner.Academic staff of the WCMT will unable to find out how to help students to enhance theiraccumulated GPAs. This is because; WCMT cannot predict students GPAs on time usingmanual data structures available. As examples give earlier in this paper the BI initiative inoperation will give a space and time to WCMT academic managers and tutors to predictstudents GPAs on time and then can find out how best they can help students to enhancetheir accumulated GPAs.

Conclusions

Preceding discussion on Source Data Management Techniques at WCMT has found severalissues. Apart from the Library and the Finance Division of the Campus Source Data andInformation Management of the major key areas such as “Access management, Studentadmission, Fees management, Attendance, Progress card, Certificate management,Examination management, Assessment, Library management, Event management,Transport management, Health/Nursing, Discipline/attainments, Result analytics, Feedbackand Archive” of the Campus are done manually. All stake holders find it difficult to taketimely decisions as and when the Campus authorities needed to take immediate actions forthe smooth functioning of the Academic programs. Many delays and dissatisfaction on thepart of customer (students) frequently occur. This situation certainly affects the academicprogram of the WCMT. The present student are the de facto “Reference Markets” for futurestudents to be attracted to WCMT products (various undergraduate and post-graduateprograms offer at WCMT). If they face difficult situations at WCMT they will sure not act asreference markets for our future programs.

In order to overcome the shortcomings mentioned above of the “Source Data andInformation Management” and the constrains of not having a “Business Intelligence” initiativeat WCMT Campus, some new techniques have to be identify for implementation at WCMT inorder to addressed the issues identified above.

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The suggested new innovative techniques are:

Automated Source Data Management System coupled with Business Intelligence (BI)capabilities in the identified problematic and other areas of the data and informationmanagement systems at WCMT.

Proposed BI Framework for WCMT Campus will be a boon to higher educationenterprise such as WCMT Campus because they pull together vast quantities of real-time information from disparate systems at WCMT and distil them into focused viewsof the business.

Improve operational efficiency- Eliminate report backlog and delays- find root causesand take action – Negotiate better contracts with suppliers and customers(students)Identify resource waste and reduce inventory costs- Sell information tocustomers, partners ,and suppliers – Leverage WCMT’s investment in the ERP or thedata warehouse – Give users the means to make better decisions and Challengeassumptions with factual information.

List of references

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2. Alnoukari, Mouhib. Using business intelligence solutions for achieving organization’sstrategy: Arab Intern atonal University Case study [In] Internet working Indonesia Journal V.1 -No.2.

3. DANA (2009). “The importance of managing data assets” [In] Dana Guide to the Data

Management Body of Knowledge. [ n.p: Tech Publications: Ch. 1

4. Gartner (2013) Gartner business intelligence and analytics summit, February 5-7,Barcelona.

5. Halper, Fern [et al].Text analytics: the Hurwitz victory index report. Hurwitz and Associates

6. Loshin, David (2009). Master data management. Burlington: Elsevier, 241p.

7. Oracle (2011) Master data management: an Oracle white paper, 7p.

8. Ubayawardena, W.K.N.D. (2013) Information retrieval and business intelligence: MIMLecture Notes. Colombo: NILIS.

9. WCMT. “About us”. (www.wcmtedu.net - (2013-07-20)

10. WCMT (2012) CDS/ISIS Operational Manual. Colombo: WCMT