Anton Salamatov: We laid the foundation for consolidation of the reporting within all bank

Anton Salamatov: Traditionally in bank so-called "separate" approach to release of the management reporting was used. Business divisions prepared the reports which are crossed in many respects with submission of the same data, but processed on different algorithms that led to discrepancies in a total. Implementation of an analytical system allowed to facilitate transition to uniform reference books and algorithms of data processing, first, to exclude discrepancies in the total provided by divisions and, secondly, to minimize the number of the reports duplicating each other. Before implementation of Oracle BI as the analytical tool means of Microsoft Office (the MS Excel, MS Access) and MS Analysis Services were used.

TAdviser: By what criteria you were guided when choosing the analytical platform? What new instrumental opportunities did it give you?

Anton Salamatov: The analytical platform had to meet to a number of mandatory requirements. Namely: - Use of uniform security policy and access isolation, existence of the developed instruments of administration and performance management;

• Existence of uniform model of metadata for all tools, tool kit of programming and graphic approaches of assembly for development of a system;
• Connectivity of several data sources;
• The developed visualization tools;
• Existence of flexible tools for drawing up independent requests for "self-service" of analysts of business divisions;
• Close integration with MS Office: support of the document formats, formulas, data-refresh and pivot tables, reverse notation;
• Fast OLAP the analysis provided that a source is the relational (not multidimensional) DB;
• Existence of the finished system implementation projects in Russia, including, in banks of the Russian Federation;
• Existence in the market of enough specialists in this BI system.

The Oracle Business Intelligence platform selected by us answered all these criteria, and the contractor –the FORS company provided us the whole portfolio of successful implementations. Existence in the IT company of the specialists understanding bank specifics from within and ready to completion of a product according to our requirements was very important. In general, permanent dialog and the closest constructive cooperation with specialists of FORS at all stages of the project is what should be selected in particular.

TAdviser: What gave sharing of the BI and Essbase tools? Whether your expectations and expectations of end users were met?

Anton Salamatov: Main advantage of use of BI reports on the basis of cubes of Essbase is the possibility of faster work with the report: data acquisition and deployment of hierarchies happens several times quicker, than in the reports generating SQL queries to relational DBMS.

TAdviser: What difficulties it was necessary to meet during implementation? How they were overcome?

Anton Salamatov: At the beginning of the project the decision to implement at that time the new version of a product – Oracle BI EE 11g was made. During implementation it became clear that in many respects it was still "dampish" and required completion therefore it was necessary to make on the run changes to a program code that prolonged the planned implementation term a little.

The, not less, thanks to the fact that our contractor quickly found ways of a bypass of a problem all difficulties were overcome.

TAdviser: Tell about project deliverables. What impact did new functionality of a system have on operating activities of bank?

Anton Salamatov: The main outcome of the project consists that the base for consolidation of the reporting within all bank was put. Project implementation allowed to exclude work with a set of file reports, to provide to all users uniform point of entry for work with the management reporting, to accurately differentiate access rights to information, to minimize differences in submission of the same information for the similar purposes in reports of different divisions.

Such important blocks of the reporting as managerial balance, a common size balance sheet and the reporting under separate activities were created. By own efforts we developed the reporting on profits and losses and also the reporting for the management of bank.

TAdviser: At what levels now do use reports which are prepared by a system? Whether there were any high-quality changes in process of preparation of the reporting?

Anton Salamatov: At the moment heads of business divisions of Bank of level of chiefs of Managements use the implemented reports above. The main users and developers of the reporting are the staff of Finance and economics department who, in particular, prepares reports for the management of bank. It is in the long term going to implement dash-board'a (data mart) for maintaining operational analytics which board members of Bank would use.

TAdviser: How was trained to work with a system? How many it was trained the employees and in what terms? How do you estimate availability of the system interface to normal users? How easy to work as it with a system whether they can independently create reports?

Anton Salamatov: Training was provided by teachers of FORS of the program which is specially adapted for our needs that is very important, considering specifics of our requirements. It was conducted in three stages lasting one day everyone. At each stage 7 employees were trained. In learning process already really working reporting implemented on Oracle BI was used.

System interfaces which ensure functioning with the prepared reports were easy and convenient in work, without having caused in users of difficulties in mastering.

The need for independent creation by users of reports so far only begins to form therefore this practice was not widely adopted yet.

TAdviser: How it is going to develop a system further?

Anton Salamatov: In the nearest future we are going to begin the gradual translation of the management reporting of all divisions on uniform BI tools and also to implement practice of independent creation of reports by analysts on the basis of a uniform domain model. BI tools of Oracle are rather flexible and convenient in use therefore for us it is possible to develop further a system by own efforts.