Survey Research Operations Cost Reporting System
From Business Intelligence
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[edit] Project Contact
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Jeffery Keeler, (jskeeler@umich.edu).
[edit] Project Description
Scope section: The Cost Reporting System (CRS) implemented by Survey Research Operations (SRO) at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) allows detailed projections of future expense and project budget to be stored in a controlled SQL database environment. Users are then able to view and manage their projects through Excel's dynamic pivot table reports.
[edit] Business Need
- Track the projects may have hundreds of temporary staff working across the United States to collect survey data and various regular employees working on the project
- Reduce the complexity of financial management and cost monitoring of SRO studies.
- Provide an accessible, efficient, and accurate method of generating budget projections for a study.
- Enable earlier identification and intervention for possible overruns.
- Eliminate much of the manual work required to generate accurate cost projections and reports for a project.
- Support quick department-level analysis of the health of both sponsored projects and overhead accounts.
[edit] System/Application & Data Sources
The CRS is driven by a SQL Server 2005 database using Microsoft Excel pivot tables as a reporting tool. The database houses detailed projection and budget information across all SRO projects. It combines this information with financial data for all SRO projects, which is pulled each month from the U-M Data Warehouse. The University financial data are then optimized to provide the most useful display of information for SRO’s complex business requirements. Excel is used as a reporting tool pulling data through an ActiveX Data Object (ADO) connection and outputting both standard as well as dynamic pivot table reports.
[edit] Project Purpose, Scope, & Deliverables
- Create a centralized environment for maintaining cost monitoring and projection reporting data and answering complex financial and resource management questions.
- Improve the accuracy of reports to clients and upper management.
- Develop an efficient and accurate projection process for early identification of possible overrun situations.
- Provide an accessible and useful method of displaying information for SRO’s complex business requirements.
- Allow users to rapidly manipulate and customize their project reports.
- Enable SRO to predict future projection and budget activity across the entire department.