At a Glance

Industry	Higher Education, Academic and Research Institution
Organization	129+ year-old West Coast university, 7 schools, 40 academic departments
Platform	Informatica 10.4 for business intelligence, ETL, and reporting
Scope	HCM reporting for 2,200+ faculty, 12,500+ administrative staff, and ~17,250 students, plus university-wide financial reporting and analytics
Outcome	ETL load times cut from 6-8 hours, 24x7 production support, and measurably reduced technical debt

OBIEE SUPPORT SERVICES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

OBIEE Business Intelligence Support Services for a Top-Ranked West Coast University

Customer Background

A 129-Year-Old Institution Scaling Its BI and EDW Reporting

A 129+ year-old West Coast university, ranked among the top educational institutions in the world, continues to reinvent itself as a global thought leader. With 7 schools and 40 academic departments offering graduate programs in law, medicine, education, and business, the effort to track HCM information across 2,200+ faculty members, 12,500+ administrative staff, and almost 17,250 students steadily grew in scale and complexity.

As one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, the first to raise over a billion dollars in a single year, it made robust financial reporting and analytics a mission-critical requirement. University leadership had already invested in Informatica 10.4 as its core platform for OBIEE business intelligence and reporting, and needed a partner who could keep that investment running at its best.

Customer Storeis

The Challenge

Scaling OBIEE and EDW Support for a Fast-Growing University

To accelerate time to value and improve responsiveness for its user community, the university selected DataTerrain to provide ongoing OBIEE support services and Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) maintenance, drawing on DataTerrain's track record of improving service levels, fine-tuning DWH performance, and enhancing large-scale BI applications.

Large, complex user base

BI and HCM reporting covers 7 schools and 40 departments, tracking 2,200+ faculty members, 12,500+ staff members, and ~17,250 students. Enrollment and staffing shift every term, so the EDW has to keep absorbing changes from multiple source systems without breaking.

Slow ETL performance

Some Informatica loads were taking 6-8 hours to complete. When loads run long, they risk spilling into business hours, so dashboards end up showing yesterday's numbers right when people need current data.

Mission-critical financial reporting

The university is one of the top fundraising institutions nationally, the first to raise over a billion dollars in a year. That scale means financial reports feed audits and board decisions, so accuracy isn't optional.

Responsiveness for the user community

Faculty, admissions, finance, and medical staff all depend on OBIEE for dashboards and analysis. As usage grew, service levels lagged, and slower turnaround times for fixes or requests began to erode trust in the platform.

Rising technical debt

Without best-practice discipline, years of bug fixes and enhancements add up to a harder-to-maintain system, where every new change becomes slower and riskier to implement.

Round-the-clock reliability

With thousands of users relying on the EDW, the university needed 24x7 support, including weekends and off-hours, to catch issues before they lead to missed reports or extended downtime.

Our Approach

DataTerrain's EDW Support and Maintenance Methodology

DataTerrain deployed its proprietary EDW support methodology, combining decades of experience managing production support for large-scale implementations with deep technical knowledge of Informatica PowerCenter and OBIEE reporting.

1

Application Services

EDW design changes, build, and maintenance using Informatica PowerCenter; data integration and merging across sources; data profiling and cleansing; and ongoing performance tuning.

2

EDW Maintenance

Maintaining every EDW table loaded from internal and external source systems, running audit processes, and ensuring consistency and adherence to specifications.

3

Development, Enhancement, and Bug Fixing

Best-practices ETL development aligned to university standards; SCD (slowly changing dimensions) implementation to track historical data; business-rule implementation through Informatica transformations, mappings, and mapplets (router, filter, expression, aggregator, joiner, sequence generator); and ownership of the incident lifecycle from debugging through root cause analysis (RCA) and resolution.

4

Load Plan Monitoring and 24x7 Support

Round-the-clock production support, including off-hours and weekend on-call coverage; daily build support across UAT and production; change control and continuous integration; daily system health checks and session monitoring; and coordination with DBAs to resolve tablespace and file system issues.

Business Impact

Outcomes That Mattered to the University

Faster ETL Performance

Reports run natively within PeopleSoft, removing dependency on external reporting tools.

24x7 Production Support

Round-the-clock support drastically cut issue resolution time and eliminated ticket backlog queueing for the user community.

Reduced Technical Debt

Continual system improvements lowered the number of technical issues and incidents, as well as the average resolution time.

Global Delivery Model

Distributed teams across DataTerrain's global delivery centers ensured round-the-clock coverage for the university's user base.

Deep Domain Expertise

Customized BI and EDW solutions delivered for the school of medicine, school of finance, MAIS, admissions, and faculty management.

Stronger BI Investment ROI

DataTerrain's support and maintenance model accelerated time to value and set the university on course for continued analytics growth.

Bottom Line

What Sets DataTerrain Apart

DataTerrain's best-in-class EDW support methodology made a visible impact on the university: ETL load times that once ran 6-8 hours came down significantly through source, target, mapping, and database-level performance tuning, push-down optimization, and Informatica partitioning. 24x7 production support sharply reduced issue resolution time and eliminated ticket backlog, while continual improvement measurably reduced technical debt. Together with a global delivery model and deep domain expertise across the school of medicine, the school of finance, MAIS, admissions, and faculty management, DataTerrain has set the university on a course to accelerate the return on its OBIEE and business intelligence investment.

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"DataTerrain's deep technical expertise, global delivery model, and deep domain expertise in higher education were the standout contributors to this engagement's success. They removed our complexity-related bottlenecks, instituted best practices for performance and maintainability, and created customized OBIEE and EDW solutions for our distinct user groups across the institution. DataTerrain remains a trusted partner in our journey as a global thought leader in this next decade of rapid change." Director of Business Intelligence
Top-Ranked West Coast University