The financial planning and analysis (FPA) team of a large enterprise organization called Irving Oil are faced with a critical decision in 2017. The FPA team has been using Cognos tools for 15 years as a way of executing financial reporting tasks. The Cognos system has developed into a very mature reporting process model for the FPA team regarding receiving requests, understanding requirements, executing the development, assigning security to the data, and distributing the results. The IT team is required to connect Cognos to the source systems that provide the data. The reporting process works, but the process can be lengthy and organizational demand is growing. The FPA team is having difficulty maintaining that demand, and would like a tool that could help encourage a self-service model for less complicated requests.
In addition to financial analysis, the organization requires analysis of data in other departments including but not limited to HR (employee demographics or retirement succession planning), Marketing (website usage, customer demographics), Operational Excellence (safety incidents), and Engineering (asset management and system operations).These departments are immature in analytics tools and processes when compared to Finance, and require help.
The IT team is aware of a disruptive tool in the field of analytics called Thought spot. After connecting Thought spot to the enterprise data systems, the tool is capable of querying data and presenting answers to an analyst that would not require the FPA team to action. IT has secured budget approval to run a proof of concept (POC) project to test the applicability of Thought spot within the enterprise. The goals of the POC include but are not limited to:
install Thought spot
connect Thought spot to two source systems
configure Thought spot
assess Thought spot as a potential self-serve tool
You have been assigned as the project manager for the POC. After researching the product, you must prepare a scope definition for the POC. Additionally, you must prepare a Level 3 WBS of the work packages required for this POC.