The ScoreCard, balanced decision making at PGGM By Rob Bello and Monique Gerritse-van de Brug

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1 The ScoreCard, balanced decision making at PGGM By Rob Bello and Monique Gerritse-van de Brug There will be two parts to this paper: First something about the company and the reasons for having the application developed. After that some background about how the project was set up and executed. Objective of PGGM The goal of PGGM is for her clients to enjoy their retirement at a reasonable price. PGGM pension fund was established in 1969 by a merger of several smaller pension funds. She works in the health care and social welfare sector, which means that she provide for financing of the monetary consequences of old age, death, invalidity and early retirement for the staff at hospitals, homes for the elderly, home nursing and social work. PGGM Pension Fund In nearly 30 years there has been an extremely rapid growth. This growth primarily resulted from privatisation of much of the field of work as well as the inclusion in the pension schemes of all the part-timers. There are now some 1.2 million clients and the total capital invested at the end of 1997 was 79 billion guilders. PGGM Clientmanagement This department now has 360 employees. These people are together responsible for the implementation of the scheme from registration to the point at which pensions are paid. It is divided into 3 sectors and 15 teams. For the administration of the many processes which are carried out in the clientmanagementdepartment, its management staff needed to have good management information. Before the application ScoreCard existed, this information was available partially, primarily in the form of print-outs. One could swim in that output all day at the risk of being drowned in it. So there was a big need for information in a form that was highly structured and immediately available. The solution was found in the Balanced Business Score Card. Balanced Business Score Card The BBSC is a model with which you can assess your organisation from four different angles. These angles are interdependent and they influence one another. Business processes: What products are currently being worked on, will the work be completed on time, how much time needs to be spent on them, etc. Financial perspective: Here we set down our expectations, or prognoses, and on the basis of actual figures achieved, we can monitor the accuracy of our planning. In addition, this gives insight into the costs which have been incurred and will be incurred. Client perspective: How does the client feel about the products, what are the client s wishes, any complaints and compliments, etc. Organisational learning: What is the innovative capacity of the organisation. The first two angles - business processes and financial processes - were developed by Pecoma Informatica within the application ScoreCard.

2 Pecoma Informatica Pecoma is a full-service supplier of IT-solutions. There are about 370 highly educated ITspecialists employed and the annual turnover of 1997 stands at 45 million guilder. Pecoma was the first SAS Quality Partner in the Netherlands. Last year the SAS Competence Center was set up. This Competence Center consists of 27 SAS -specialists. Next to their normal work, they take part in several workgroups which are being set up within the Competence Center: Web integration, Object orientation, Data warehousing, Standards and building blocks, Applicability of SAS/EIS. When necessary these workgroups deliver the specific knowledge on their subject by means of training and consultancy. Starting points Starting point for this project: The user comes first, A short time-to-market is wished to solve an amount of urgent bottle necks within a long term architecture, There exist the necessity of saving costs, The wish to use state-of-the-art IT-possibilities. To realise these starting points there were two concepts used: The umbrella model and the data warehouse concept. The umbrella model A complete solution usually takes a long time and holds the risk that she differs from the long term vision when she is finally completed. To prevent this, the umbrella model of Pecoma is designed as follows: During the development of several short period projects, the long term vision is kept in mind. By comparing the result of each subproject with this vision, it is very easy to correct something when necessary. At the same time, the possibility exists to solve some urgent bottle necks in a short time, because one does not have to wait for the overall solution. In this way, the umbrella model joins the short term results with the long term goals. The data warehouse concept To develop ScoreCard, the data warehouse concept was chosen. The data warehouse concept consists of five stages which should be executed in every data warehouse project: Datamodelling, Management of sources Organisation Optimisation Exploitation After the datamodel is developed, the building of the data warehouse can begin. During the managementstage all the sources are being read en stored in SAS datasets. After that, the data is being processed during the organisationstage which includes for example

3 transformation and denormalization. The result is a complete denormalized basetable, which serves as the base of the data warehouse. However, the data in this basetable is so detailed that users cannot get any information out of it. Therefore, the data is being aggregated during an optimisationstage. By aggregation on different levels, the drilldown-functionality is created. The data warehouse is now ready for exploitation. This can be done by queries, data mining or some sort of EIS-application. Metadata forms the key to this all: During every stage metadata is being used to keep the data warehouse flexible. Pecoma s building blocks The building blocks originate from the data warehouse concept, the idea of reusability and quick applicability. In the umbrella model one has to complete each stage of the data warehouse concept for every subproject. Within one umbrella it is very handy to reuse some parts from former projects, but also new customers can profit from quick applicable building blocks. At Pecoma we developed several building blocks and some of them are used in ScoreCard. The managementmodule serves two goals: First to maintain the metadata in relation to the sources and second to read these sources flexible by means of this metadata. Instead of writing another program that seems the same as many others, to read a source, metadata is defined (for example name and location, which variables the source contains, delimiter and so on). By means of this metadata the module generates the programcode to read the source which can be used directly or in a batchjob. Proceduremanagement includes all the buildingstages before exploitation, one can also call it batchmanagement. ScoreCard is updated by a daily batch. By using proceduremanagement, the batch stays flexible. In the metadata is specified which programs should be executed, in which sequence and with which parameters. For example the program that generates and executes code to read the sources, transformationprograms, denormalizationprograms and optimisationprograms. With the metadata the complete batch is defined and is easy executable. On the exploitationside there are two building blocks: For ad hoc queries a reportmodule is developed. This module gives the user the opportunity to make his own queries by selecting class- and analysisvariables with or without a whereclause. The queries can be saved for the purpose of standardreports. A multidimensional EIS-object is developed for users which want a simple way to explore the data. A dynamic view can be created by using drilldown-possibilities. Evaluation of the starting points The user comes first. Because the project is developed in close co-operation with the users, there are 20 satisfied managers which use ScoreCard. ScoreCard has had two buildingstages. Both of them lasted three months in which there worked three developers on ScoreCard. The starting point short time-to-market is fulfilled. The two stages solved some urgent bottle necks: Now the managers can access managementinformation on the subjects stockmanagement and budget & actual numbers. By using the data warehouse-concept and building blocks the long term architecture is assured.

4 Saving of costs is realised by the fact that the subprojects were implemented on time and were a success. That seems an odd remark, but how many projects are overdue or are not consistent to the wishes and by that provide the customers with high costs? Another point is that the managers and other employees get better information, so they can work more efficient. Data warehousing fills in the last starting point: The wish to use state-of-the-art ITpossibilities. The application There are two pieces of the balanced business scorecard realised so far: First the businessprocesses where the data warehouse gives insight into the stock and the processing of the mail. Second, the financial part is realised, which gives insight into the budgets and actual numbers. On these subjects, ScoreCard provides managementinformation to 20 managers and prioritylists for about 250 employees. ScoreCard exist two year and is a real client/server application. However, if one parameter is changed in the metadata, the entire batch and exploitation-application can also run stand alone. The database had grown to three gigabytes in one and a half year but the performance is still excellent. This is realised by using indices and making selections on the server. Only the small resultdatasets are being downloaded to be displayed.

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