For a leading Czech bank Profinit developed a reporting system for the unsecured-credit processing centre. The main goal of this project was to enable the customer to automate reporting of key performance and process indicators.

Project goals

• Introduce a solution for creating reports
• Integrate several data sources into one (analytical data mart)
• Design a data mart with a suitable structure for the needs of reporting that would be easy to expand in future
• Perform a business analysis and design suitable reports for management
• Use of OLAP cubes, which enable users to monitor key indicators from the perspective of various dimensions and flexibly change these dimensions (an OLAP cube is a special structure, with converted data, that enables users to perform their own analyses above the selected indicator)

Solution

For our customer we developed a reporting solution for the unsecured-credit processing centre designed on the Cognos 8 platform. The solution enables the customer to automate reporting of key performance and process indicators. This particularly involves reporting of volume indicators pertaining to the number of processed client applications for credit products and time indicators describing the efficiency of the process of providing products.

The project started with an analysis and definition of the key indicators and relevant dimensions (views) through which the indicators are monitored (for example, the revenue-volume indicator can be viewed from the perspective of its development in time, from the perspective of its distribution across individual products, business locations and regions, etc.). The content and form of reports were then defined and user roles with distinct authorisations were determined. One indicator can be monitored from the perspective of several different dimensions at the same time.

Within the project, an analytical data mart was created that contains data from source operations systems. The data mart is connected to the Cognos environment, where the required reports are created.

The project continues with support of operation and administration of the Cognos infrastructure.

Benefits of the solution

• Timely data for decision-making purposes - reports are updated daily and are available via a web portal.
• Automated reporting solution brings time savings for analysts, reduces the error rate of reports and reduces the time needed for creating reports.
• Multidimensional analysis - users can monitor key indicators from the perspective of various dimensions and flexibly modify those dimensions, and can thus create their own reports above the selected indicators.
• Uniform definition of all monitored indicators ("one version of the truth".
• Reports are available to a broad spectrum of users via a web portal.
• Effective use of the potential of company data - reporting takes place over data integrated from several different sources.
• Acceleration of decision-making and planning processes.
• High quality of the visual form of reports thanks to the Cognos 8 product.