BRI is also using Microsoft Services to provide facility management, outsourced services, HR and capacity to run its data operations. Within the umbrella of facility management, Microsoft Services is providing BRI 'break-and-fix' services. Value-added services include checks on the health of BRI's IT environment, training for staff and updates on the latest Microsoft technologies and their road map to allow BRI to align adoption with business need. Never resting on its laurels, BRI has also signed up Microsoft to perform a technical review of the performance of its data warehousing software to examine how it can run more efficiently. The full-scale review will extend beyond technical porting to architecture and will involve revisiting cube design.

Planning the birth

Before creating their data warehouse, Malligan's team was particular about addressing users' concerns--by involving them in the project. User requirements, going down to the desired layout and data structure and fields for reports, were confirmed, documented and signed off. Users hail from every division of the bank--treasury, credit, business, retail, micro, middle-market, agribusiness, corporate banking, audit and compliance. "We had a project steering committee--with representation from two directors of the bank--and project working teams. Each division assigned representatives to work on the programme. We had regular meetings to make sure work was on track and requirements were met."

BRI put its finance and accounting division in charge of the programme. They had to coordinate with 28 divisions to find out their detailed requirements. "Out of that, we found that we needed 500 different reports. Upon reviewing the requirements, however, we realised that a lot of divisions were asking for the same data but in different formats, so we were able to reduce the reports from 500 to135." The second step was training users to access the SQL database. "The advantage of that is to make them more comfortable with cube and SQL technology and take on the responsibility of generating reports in different formats instead of relying on IT to do so."

A data warehouse is born

Users have been unanimous that the system has made their jobs easier. For instance, now that it has a data warehouse, the bank's administration and credit division can look at daily online reports showing, say, the top 200 debtors, or customers with overdue or non-performing loans. "We can look at data online, which is great. But the greater benefit is the improved quality and detail of the data--which allows us to make more informed decisions," says Malligan.

He adds: "This effort has enhanced the perception of IS. We wanted IS to get away from the tradition of producing management reports and owning data, which should not be part of our business or operations. IS's job is to provide the infrastructure and bandwidth connecting the systems, not the reports. Now that data from the Silverlake system [that runs on AS/400] is uploaded automatically to the data warehouse [that runs on Intel servers], no intervention is needed from IT to tweak any data."