For more than 50 years, Sandia National Laboratories has been researching and developing technologies for supporting initiatives pertaining to national security, energy, and the environment. Because Sandia works closely with regulatory agencies such as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), they are responsible for producing accurate, quantifiable data—often on-demand—and submitting it for review.

With goals of increasing worker efficiency and improving the quality of information used for decision-making and reporting out to agencies such as the NNSA, Sandia National Laboratories selected Oracle Daily Business Intelligence (DBI) to provide fast and efficient delivery of the key business performance metrics—right to the desktop.

Slow Information
Before implementing Oracle Daily Business Intelligence, Sandia was mired in processes that simply did not work. "We had multitudes of employees, spread across numerous divisions, gathering business metrics on a monthly, quarterly, and an annual basis," explains Eric Santillanes, Oracle developer at Sandia National Labs. This un-scientific approach to information gathering resulted in massively detailed reports that were generated up to 20 days after the reporting period had ended. If issues cropped up after the fact, it could take up to four weeks before managers were presented with the information they needed to take corrective measures. Something had to change.

Existing Infrastructure, New Benefits
Sandia needed to improve the underlying quality and efficiency of the methods they employed for gathering/disseminating crucial performance metrics. With that, they established a plan to use Oracle Portal 10g as the common entry point to all business intelligence tools in their existing ERP system. "DBI was something we first learned about at major Oracle conferences," says Santillanes. “Since reporting is a big issue for us, people got pretty excited about it.” Santillanes was tapped as the technical point of contact for the product. "It was my job to make sure we got DBI up and running as quickly as possible so Sandia personnel could get started using all of its delivered functionality."

"The setups for Daily Business Intelligence proved to be simple because they essentially piggyback off of the setups that users have already completed via other E-Business Suite applications," Santillanes explains. "We included a couple of new setups on top of what already existed. It was then simply a matter of learning some data loads and the reports we needed were available."

Suzie Simpson, a business system analyst at Sandia and the functional team lead for procurement, worked alongside Santillanes to roll out the new DBI functionality setups. "Before we rolled it out, I grew my knowledge base about Oracle Daily Business Intelligence through participating in Oracle's Purchasing Customer Advisory Board," says Simpson. "I also picked up information about its evolution by attending the OAUG and Oracle OpenWorld conferences. I was excited about DBI because I could see it held the potential to make reporting a lot easier. This was important because it was a task that had always been a bit of headache for our procurement personnel."

Operation Regulation
Meeting the stringent requirements of the NNSA is a top priority at Sandia and Simpson explains how the user-friendly aspects of Oracle Daily Business Intelligence are making a significant difference when the pressure to report is on. "The NNSA was sponsoring a project that required us to look at consolidated spending across all of the NNSA-operated laboratories," explains Simpson. "Our spend analysis team needed access to commodity spending in short order. They also needed to get reporting tools onto their desktops so they could sensibly manage their workload from day to day. DBI gives them a very user-friendly tool they can use to look at up-to-date information and see exactly what's happening on many different levels, including drilling deep down into the line item details."

While deep drill down is a bonus, Simpson explains that from a procurement perspective, the emphasis is mostly on high-level data. "Managers aren't drilling down to a lower level on a regular basis," she explains. "They are typically looking at the higher-level data, checking how we're doing with our suppliers, and tracking buyerworkloads. They also look at the efficiency of our payment process and how that impacts our suppliers. This type of information, displayed in an easy to read format, helps managers to stay on top of their business and adjust when trends are identified. It will allow us to monitor and manage our business in procurement."

An Integrated Foundation
The ready-made aspects of Sandia's existing Oracle E-Business Suite foundation made comparison shopping and benchmarking a moot point. "I didn't perform any side-by-side comparisons," says Santillanes. "Through the integration of all of the Oracle applications, plus the out-of-the-box availability of reports for operations within Oracle applications, there's just nothing to setting it up and adding it to your existing modules." The Project Lead for procurement's spend analysis team was, according to Simpson, quick to laud the implementation experience. We implemented Oracle Daily Business Intelligence on Monday," says Simpson. "It turns out they also had reports due to NNSA that same day. Through DBI's export functionality, the spend analysis project lead was able generate exactly the type of information NNSA wanted and needed." As for exactly how much time using Oracle Daily Business Intelligence saved, Simpson says, "The team leader could get, in less than an hour, what it used to take weeks to compile."

Santillanes also had his sights on streamlined, intelligence-driven financial reporting. "Prior to the DBI implementation, it took several months of gathering requirements and writing customer reports to measure different performance indicators for the accounts payable department," he says. "Implementing a new DBI module required no more than applying the right patches, running the loads, and giving users access to it. It's incredibly simple." As for getting the rest of the team up and running, Santillanes says, "As a DBI implementer, the only training I've needed to provide amounted to a ten minute demo, providing access to the tool, then inviting people to follow up with questions. Those three simple steps are usually more than enough because it's such an easy product to use."

Feedback to Fruition
Working closely with organizations like Sandia National Laboratories during the development and enhancement phases of Oracle Daily Business Intelligence provides tremendous and ongoing benefits for all. "My experience working with the Oracle development team has been tremendous, especially since I've been involved with the procurement customer advisory board," Simpson says. “Oracle really wants to make sure customers are getting the products and tools they need." Santillanes supports Simpson's feedback. "We've had the advantage of being an early adopter of DBI, and working with the Oracle team was truly a pleasure," says Santillanes. “They're receptive to any feedback we provide which is apparent in the end product they deliver because it's something that's absolutely useful."