Korea Entergy Management Corporation (KEMCO) is organization that contributes the national economy and develops and supplies future energy. KEMCO has created and provided the data lookup screens by OLAP dedicated tool and key business system, every time line-of-business users request. Meanwhile, as green growth has become the keyword to stand for these times and the related laws have been embodied, the organization felt the need of having the new class of business efficiency. KEMCO selected the Voluntary Agreement (VA)-related business system started from 1998 as the first target for innovation and then they got the development of BI system going in the end of 2009. It has driven the BI project to maximize the ease-of-use through the Microsoft's solution instead of the existing OLAP tools. Through this, having noticed the business efficiency of the user environment where they can draw the statistics they want on Excel without moving to lookup screen each time, KEMCO has a plan to extend the user-oriented BI into their other system areas.
Situation
The statistical and analytical business is of the highest importance to Korea Entergy Management Corporation (KEMCO) leading the charge as it tries to implement the green growth and low carbon economy. Since it is the organization managing the demands for energy, the statistics and analysis is the key to its all businesses.
They in KEMCO have made a number of statistical and analytical data viewed in a data lookup page by key business system. Prior to creating reports, they had to log in the data lookup site of the related business system and extract the data. And if there is any hard-to-acquire information from the view, they had requested it to Inforamtization Team, Information Statistics Division, and KEMCO via e-mails or phone calls. After collecting data, they arranged and analyzed it in Excel to create reports ordinarily.
The need of new class of efficiency has not been on the rise in such a business process until the 'green' emerged as the keyword passing through this time. In a major move towards green growth everywhere including economy and society, the government declared the low carbon green growth as a national vision in 2008.
To support this institutionally, the preparation for the Framework Act on Low Carbon, Green Growth (hereinafter, Green Act) is under discussion commonly. Naturally, as the KEMCO's stature and role has grown, for statistics and analysis business as well, they need to prepare the future changes with the stream of times.
VA (Voluntary Agreement)-related business was picked up as the first target for innovation. VA is the non-compulsory energy saving measurement where a corporation sets itself the objective of energy saving or greenhouse gas emission reduction for five years and makes an agreement with government, and then the government helps the company fulfill this agreement to make the objectives achieved with the collaborative effort of two parties.
KEMCO has collected and analyzed a number of information for evaluating and monitoring VA related corporations' fulfillment. As the demand for this statistical and analytical information has increased in an era of Green Act, the VA related business is chosen first as a target for innovation.
Yeong-sang Yoon, Leader of Informatization Team, Information Statistics Division, KEMCO, stated, "Analytic works related to VA has increased. It is because of increased corporations participating to VA, and Green Act is the key background as well. KEMCO manages the industrial development segment, one of targets to be managed by Ministry of Environment, with regard to the enforcement of Green Act."
Actually, in addition to its existing job of establishing the energy saving goal and then monitoring and evaluating its enforcement, its statistical and analytical activity will be extended to the measurement, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emission for the emission trading scheme between corporations regarding the industrial development initiatives.
Solution
KEMCO selected the new approach of BI (Business Intelligence) for innovating statistical and analytical business related to VA system. Making a decision that it was no more efficient to develop the screen each time needed, KEMCO viewed BI the best way, since the kind and the number of materials required to analyze increased.
KEMCO grappled with the problem of finding technical methodology for implementing BI.
It thought adding BI to VA would only have a marginal effect in the light of its own experience, unless it could overcome the limitations of OLAP dedicated tool. Yoon-geun Han, Director of RealWeb which was responsible for this BI project, explained, "KEMCO has ever introduced the PowerPlay of Cognos and OLAP tools developed by a domestic development firm. As it difficult to use these tools without expertise, its usage was not too high. Thus these proprietary tools were not appropriate for satisfying the needs of users to extract statistics they want if needed."
The other alternative is the Microsoft's BI solution. It is the best in terms of ease-of-use. Mr. Han said, "Whatever OLAP solutions, it is not much different for us to implement BI system. However, this is not the case of users. Unlike other tools, Microsoft's solution enables users to handle everything in Excel which they are using ordinarily. This is why the key feature of this project was the Excel Services.
The system developed during August to December 2008 was configured to make the data exported from VA systems operated on SQL Server 2005 and distributed and shared through the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007's Excel Services. The existing lookup screens were removed except the page used to access by its staff outside the company. Besides, About 10 data marts were created to reside on SQL Server 2008.
Finishing BI development for VA system successfully, KEMCO are considering extending BI into its other systems step by step. Mr. Yoon stated, "We have noticed that BI was very useful from the case of VA system. Now we are in discussions with Microsoft about applying BI to Climate Change related business and have a plan of approaching to all sorts of statistical and analytical business which we do from a enterprise-wide BI perspective in the mid- and long-term."
Benefits
Complete the data collection that used to take 3 days in real time
Staffs dealing with data analysis related to VA are feeling that all the before and after of BI implementation are certainly different. This is because they spend less time to collect materials, thus they have to only focus on writing reports.
Mr. Yoon said, "If we failed to get information we want in the lookup screen, we have to request the materials to the Information Statistics Division and it took at least 2-3 days to receive it. Now we don't have to spend our time to wait materials. We can bring the data on data marts in system into Excel."
Respond immediately to the request of a variety of statistical reports
Analysts don't have to drill down to 10~20 lookup pages or request the materials they need to the information statistics division, which increase their responsiveness to businesses.
Mr. Yoon said, "Unlike general enterprises, a public institution has to consider the statistics in building business systems. It has to submit the data to superior authorities if they request. After the SQL Server based BI system was implemented, we don't have to look up the law data case by case, freeing us to focus on our own tasks including writing graphs, which makes our responsiveness to statistical and analytical business increased."
Reduce cost about 60% compared to that of OLAP dedicated tool
KEMCO broke stereotypes that BI is the expensive tool from this project. It was not a challenge followed by big investment once the organization actually tried to do it. They found that their will and practice were important.
Mr. Yoon explained, "While Introducing OLAP tool will need at least 100 million won to be invested, we spent less than 30 million won in this BI system implementation."
KEMCO expects that these cost reduction effects will really come into its own in the case of applying BI into the system that many people use in the future. Unlike the VA system that 50 analysts use, in case of the system that has to support more users, cost benefits of Microsoft's BI solution is expected to be much higher compared to that of the traditional OLAP tool.
Ensure a smooth transition
One of results of moving from lookup screen to BI is the smooth transition of VA related business. Mr. Yoon said, "A person in charge is changed regularly in our organization, so there was a difficulty in transition for the successor in analytical business. Analysts often need their personalized environment due to the nature of statistical and analytical tasks. Thus in case of delivering information based on lookup screen in the past, the new analyst often requested a new screen to be developed. Now using Excel ensures a smooth transition
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For more information about KEMCO’s products and services, call or visit the website at:
www.kemco.or.kr
82-31-260-4114
For more information about RealWeb‘s products and services, call or visit the website at:
www.realweb21.com
82-2-501-6542
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