Data Warehousing and Research:

Managing the MillionS$

Marti Graham and Vicky ShafferApril 19, 2005

Virginia Tech is…• located in Blacksburg, VA

• the largest in the commonwealth-- 8 colleges and graduate school-- 60 bachelor’s degree programs-- 110 master’s and doctoral degree programs-- 25,000+ students

• among the Top 50 research institutions in the US

• Achieve greater eminence and international prominence in science, technology, engineering, and agriculture, while building recognition in the social sciences, business, education, arts, and humanities.

• Attract highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students and expand graduate enrollment in order to support research and scholarship.

• Increase sponsored research and scholarly and creative output, and be ranked among the nation’s top 30 universities.

Virginia Tech’s Vision

• Finance– General Ledger, Operating Ledger,Foundation, Accounts Receivable, Proposals

• Human Resources– Employee, Job, Position,Job Funding, Payroll, Position Allocation

• Alumni– Giving

• Student– Undergrad Admissions, Graduate Admissions, Undergrad Recruiting

• Parking Services

Existing Data Marts

• 1 Project Leader

• 4 Data Warehouse Architects

• 1 Oracle Data Base Administrator

• 1 Brio Administrator

• 1 Applications Analyst/Instructor

• 1 Training and Metadata Coordinator

IWA Team consists of…

• Met with Sponsored Research Faculty to set our focus and goals

Demonstrated a dashboard to illustrate capability

Outlined responsibilities

Finalized project agreement

Project Timeline (in Months)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

• Weekly meetings with functional and technical teams (small group)

• Examined the Enterprise System to select data fields to include in the ETL.

Building the OSP Data Mart

• Reviewed existing reports and reporting needs not being met

Project Timeline (in Months)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

• Documented data mapping and transformation from the Enterprise System to the Data Mart

• Designed the Data Mart, taking into account the need to integrate Proposal data with the existing Financial Data Mart

• Implemented Security

• Began ETL development (Ascential Software)

• Defined Quality Control Checks– Data Verification

• Created Reports, Dashboards and presented Training

Building the OSP Data Mart

• Help departments evaluate professors for tenure

• Allow investigators to manage research dollars

• Target agencies with available funding that have been under-proposed

• Enhances forecasting capability (research dollars)

• Ability to view research spenders (collaborators) in other departments

• Improves tracking of expenditures on received awards

• Data quality improved

Benefits of the Data Mart

?Questions

Marti Graham– grahamfa@vt.eduVicky Shaffer– shafferv@vt.edu